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Lincoln 



A Reporter's Lincoln 



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Walter B, Stevens 






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The style of this book is intended 
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A Reporter's Lincoln 



History is not history unless 

it is the truth. — Lincoln 



BY 

WALTER B. STEVENS 



Missouri Historical Society 

Saint Louis 

1916 



i 



.if 

Edition limited to six hundred copies of which this is 



This Notebook is dedicated to 

CAPTAIN HENRY KING, 

whose intimate knowledge of 
Lincoln dated from the "Lost 
Speech;** whose youth was 
passed among relatives of 
Lincoln; whose appreciation of 
Lincoln was inspiration to the 
reporter for the assembling of 
many of these recollections. 



APR -2 1917 



Copyright, 1916 

by the 

Missouri Historical Society 



ICI,A4601.35 



They Knew Lincoln 

These recollections of Lincoln were assembled in newspaper 
goings and comings. They are plain tales told by men and women 
"who knew Lincoln." In degree of acquaintance they range from 
a single, perhaps casual, meeting, to years of intimacy. In respect 
to time, they relate to Lincoln, the clerk at New Salem; to Lincoln, 
the president; and to Lincoln at stages of his career between the 
clerkship and the presidency. 

New Salem, the settlement that was promising when Lincoln 
went there to begin his manhood life, passed away long ago. When 
the site was visited by the reporter not a building was left. But 
living in and about Petersburg, the thrifty little city which succeeded 
New Salem, were men and women, advanced in years, who remem- 
bered "when nobody along the Sangamon could put Abe Lincoln 
on his back." They told, from personal observation, how Lincoln 
took the death of Ann Rutledge. They described the wrestling 
match between Lincoln and Jack Armstrong, the neighborhood 
champion. They heard Lincoln read his argument about the Bible 
and saw his employer take the paper ftorn him and burn it. They 
recalled how Lincoln saved Duff Armstrong with an almanac, in a 
murder trial, and Duff Armstrong, in the flesh, reformed and a 
church member, was there to stoutly assert that the almanac was 
not faked. 

After Lincoln the wrestler and clerk, Lincoln the surveyor and 
legislator, came Lincoln the lawyer and Lincoln the politician. 
Lincoln rode the eighth circuit. Half a century afterwards his trail 
was followed by his lawsuits, his stories, his homely sayings. At 
the court towns on the circuit, people told of Lincoln from personal 
recollections. 

Of Lincoln sitting on the log with the editors and framing the 
first platform of the Republican movement in Illinois; of Lincoln 
going fishing with a carryall full of boys; of Lincoln dropping from 
the statehouse window in Vandalia to break a quorum, — of such 
were the recollections. The Bloomington speech was "lost," but 
perhaps more vivid than the forgotten words were the impressions 
which listeners received and which they described. 

Robert R. Hitt, many years Member of Congress from the 
Freeport, III., district, took the speeches of the Douglas-Lincoln 
joint debate for the Chicago Tribune. During a mid-winter recess 



of Congress, Joseph B. McCullagh, editor of the Globe-Democrat, 
sent his Washington correspondent to Mr. Hitt for an interview on 
the joint debates. Mr. Hitt was not willing to be quoted in direct 
narration. He had preserved much that was printed at the time of 
the debates. This material he supplemented with his recollection of 
many incidents connected with the historic meetings. The narrative 
was long. After it was luritten from the notes taken at the talk, 
another visit was made to Mr. Hitt's library overlooking McPherson 
Square. The narrative was read at length. Mr. Hitt made some 
further suggestions which were noted. In this form, approved by 
Mr. Hitt, the story of the debates is given. 

There were gray heads in Alton who saw Lincoln and Shields 
arrive from Springfield, who marveled as the long, clattering sabres 
were lifted down from the top of the stagecoach, who watched the 
two boatloads of solemn looking men cross to Lincoln-Shields island 
near the Missouri shore, and who told how Lincoln practiced lopping 
off the willow twigs while the seconds measured the ground and 
arranged preliminaries for a duel. 

These narratives include incidents which seemed trivial at the 
time of occurrence, but which, later, had important bearing on the 
great career. Going to see how his son Robert was getting on at 
Exeter, in preparation for Harvard, Lincoln made speeches in New 
England. The next year the eastern delegates who turned earliest 
from their first choices to Lincoln, in the nominating convention at 
Chicago, were from the New England localities where Lincoln had 
spoken. 

Reminiscences of the family life, given by a favorite nephew 
who spent much time in the Lincoln home at Springfield are more 
satisfying than much that has been given by the biographers. 

From the unpublished store of Lincoln manuscripts possessed 
by William K. Bixby have been drawn many revelations. 

With no purpose to prove or disprove anything about Lincoln, 
but with the sole intention to add to the popular comprehension of 
the Great American, these narratives have been reported. 

W. B. S. 



Growing Days at New Salem 

New Salem, the town where Lincoln tended store and made his reputation 
as the champion jumper and wrestler, is a reminiscence. It was promising in 
1833. Only the hill remains, from the summit of which there is a long stretch of 
the Sangamon bottom in view. Some years ago might have been seen the founda- 
tion timbers of the log house in which Bill Berry and Abe Lincoln kept the 
grocery. But the old timbers have disappeared, gone to be manufactured into 
Lincoln souvenirs. The mill which stood on the river bank under the hill is gone. 
It was burned long ago. At this mill, according to Salem traditions, Lincoln 
played one of his practical jokes. He took advantage of the absence of the miller 
to prop up in the hopper a dead hog with an ear of corn in its mouth. All Salem, 
except the miller, laughed. The miller felt scandalized at the insinuation of 
excessive toll "as the wheel went around." 

The everlasting hill, which was the site of New Salem, is there, but the road to 
the settlement, leading up a hollow, has been washed away. The abandoned 
town site is part of a pasture and the only way to reach it is roundabout, through 
gates and up a steep climb. From the height the visitor looks down the side of 
the hill almost as steep as the roof of a house. And that descent was the scene of 
another Lincoln joke, in which a boon companion. Jack Armstrong, aided and 
abetted. One day Lincoln and Armstrong, so the local tradition is told, put an 
old toper who was sleeping off his potations into a hogshead and started it roll- 
ing down the hill. About halfway the hogshead struck a stump, the head flew 
out, the hoops burst and the drunken man escaped with nothing worse than a 
bruise or two. 

These Salem traditions are entertaining, but in connection with them the fact 
should be kept in mind that when Abraham Lincoln came to the settlement to 
keep store he was only 22 years old. When he was past 25 he was elected to the 
Legislature, moved to Springfield and began to be a lawyer. A story of this New 
Salem period is that, having great difficulty in driving a drove of hogs across a 
bridge, Lincoln resorted to the expedient of sewing together the eyelids of several. 
He then started the blinded hogs ahead of those that could see and the drove 
passed over the bridge without any more trouble. This is one of the stories of 
Lincoln's early manhood which has been questioned. It is still told and accepted 
in Petersburg, the Menard County town which grew as New Salem declined with 
the transition from river to rail. An old lady with an excellent memory laughed 
merrily as she declared her faith in the tradition about the hogs. 

"I guess it is true," she said. "Perhaps Lincoln didn't really do the sewing, 
but only made the suggestion. You know, we hadn't many bridges in those days. 
We had to drive the hogs across the country to the Illinois River to ship them to 
market. Hogs weren't used to bridges and would refuse to cross. As I heard 
the story, Lincoln proposed the sewing and it was really done. Years after, when 
Mr. Lincoln had moved to Springfield, this story was told on him here. I think 
old Mr. Smoot started it as a reminiscence of Lincoln's early life in New Salem. 
Some of Lincoln's Petersburg friends, who didn't know so much about the pioneer 
days, expressed disbelief in the story. They were indignant that such things 
should be said of Mr. Lincoln. One of them, a member of the Killian familj', I 
think, went all of the way to Springfield to tell Mr. Lincoln what the Petersburg 



6 A Reporter's Lincoln 

people were circulating on him and to get a contradiction. Mr. Lincoln listened 
to him and said: 'Sh-sh — don't say another word about it. That thing was done 
right on old man Smoot's place.' So I judge it must have been a true story." 

New Salem days made an important as well as an interesting period in the 
life of Abraham Lincoln. They transformed the lanky, fun-loving boy of 23 into 
the ambitious, studious man of 25. When Lincoln came to New Salem he was 
proud to win the jumping and wrestling matches. Before he went away he was 
writing his views upon religion. Development of the mind was rapid. 



One community in the United States remembered the "ninety-ninth anniver- 
sary of the adoption of the constitution," and celebrated it in 1886. That place 
was Petersburg, the successor of New Salem. The scene of the celebration was 
the Menard County Fair Grounds, in the midst of fine Illinois farms, some of the 
lines of which were run by the great liberator fifty years before, when he changed 
his vocation from that of grocery clerk to country surveyor. 

The celebration took the form of a fish-fry, a popular pastime of that period 
in that part of Illinois. Old residents could remember the fish-fry dating back 
to Lincoln's time. The fish-fry was to these people what th^ barbecue was to 
Kentucky. The master of the fish-fry at the Petersburg celebration came from 
"over on the Illinois river." He looked back upon twenty years of practice in 
the art. In a shed of the fair grounds he set up his rude furnace, simply two rows 
of bricks to keep the huge pans above fire. A wagon-load of cobs and pine wood 
was heaped at one end of the furnace. With a boy to feed the fire as he directed, 
the fish-frying chef was ready for his work. The fish, croppie and bass and those 
twin aboriginals of the Illinois, the cat and the bufifalo, were cleaned, scraped and 
cut into quarter-pound sections. They were brought in bushel baskets and heaped 
on a large table in front of the master. Then the real expert work began. With 
a seemingly careless hand, the master poured out two bushels of meal on the 
table near the heap of fish. He emptied a sack of salt upon the meal. He spread 
two pounds of pepper over the meal and the salt. With arms bared to the elbow, 
he thoroughly mixed the mess, and stirred the pieces of fish. He continued to 
stir and stir until every piece of fish was well covered with meal and seasoning. 
In the long string of pans the lard was beginning to smoke when the master 
threw in the fish. With a long fork he moved from pan to pan, prodding and 
turning and at the same time giving sharp directions to the fireman. 

The master turned of? his first batch at ten o'clock. For eight hours he kept 
the pans hot. Every fifteen minutes the master delivered to the committee one 
hundred pounds of fish. Outside of the frying shed was stretched a rope, in a 
semi-circle. Over this rope were handed the loaves of bread and the hot fried 
fish in countless wooden plates, hour after hour. Before sundown over 3,000 
pounds of fish had been served. This part of Illinois has been famous for the 
participation of the gentler sex in politics ever since Lincoln one day about 
1833, told Mary Owens, as they were going up the hill west of town, his poor 
opinion of "a political woman." Two hundred picnic parties spread their table 
cloths under the trees and furnished accompaniments to the fried fish. All 
Petersburg society was there. The wild and exuberant Rock Creek boys came in 
procession bearing a pole with a much embarrassed coon aloft and escorting a 
gaily decorated triumphal car filled to overflowing with lively girls. Indian Creek, 
Athens and all of the other townships sent their delegations. 



Growing Days at New Salem 7 

Out from the great throng a member of the committee led an old gentleman 
to a quiet spot where a wagon tongue oflfered seating accommodation and said, 
"Uncle Johnny, here's a reporter. He wants to see somebody who knew Mr. 
Lincoln when he lived here. You are just the one to talk to him." 

And Uncle Johnny Potter, kindly-faced, with a twinkle in his eyes, a slight 
deafness, careful of his words, and with a recollection of detail that was marvelous, 
began to talk in 1886 of things that happened in 1831. 

"The first time I ever saw Abe Lincoln," he said, "was that summer. I was 
just starting in life myself, on my place below here and had a log cabin. In 
front of the house was a tolerably low rail fence I had built, mebbe five rails 
high. We had done breakfast a few minutes, when two young men came walk- 
ing along the road. One of them was Abe. A man named OfTut was going to 
start a grocery at Salem. That was the town then, just up the river a couple of 
miles above where Petersburg is now. Oflfut had engaged Abe to clerk for him, 
and Abe was walking up to go to work in the store. He had slept that night 
at Clary's Grove, and when he and the young man with him got along to my place 
they wanted to know if they could get a bite to eat. The old woman fixed them 
up something, the things were on the table, and they had their breakfast. When 
they got through they came out, and Abe straddled over that five-rail fence as 
if it wasn't in the way at all. I expect he would have gone over just as easy if 
it had been higher, for he had powerful long legs. When he got out to the road 
he turned and looked back at the table, and said: 'There's only one egg left; I 
believe I'd better make a clean thing of it.' So he straddled the fence again, got 
the egg and went off — laughing like a boy, shuffling the hot egg from one hand to 
the other and then peeling and eating it. That was the first time I saw Abe, but 
I saw a good deal of him afterwards, for Salem was where we all went to do our 
trading." 

"Uncle Johnny, tell him about the wrestling match with father," said a sturdy, 
middle-aged man with a pleasant face. "You remember all about that." 

The speaker was Jack Armstrong, the son of the famous Jack Armstrong, 
who was the champion in all athletic sports in this valley of the Sangamon fifty 
years before. 

"I remember it," said Uncle Johnny. "Your father was considered the best 
man in all this country for a scufHe. In a wrestle, shoulder or back hold, there 
was only now and then a man he couldn't get away with. When Lincoln came 
into this country there was a crowd called the Clary Grove boys, who pretty 
much had their way, and Jack Armstrong was the leader among them. Most 
every new man who came into the neighborhood had to be tried. Lincoln was 
pretty stout and the boys made it up to see what there was in him. They got 
him to talking about wrestling one day, and he said he could throw any man 
around there. Bill Clary kept at Lincoln until he got him into a bet of $5. Then 
he put Jack Armstrong against him. They were pretty well matched, but Abe 
was a good deal taller and could bend over Jack. They wrestled a good while, 
and I think Abe had thrown Jack two joints and was likely to get him down. 
Clary, I expect, thought he was in danger of losing his money for he called out: 
'Throw him anyway. Jack.' At that Jack loosed his back hold and grabbed Abe 
by the thigh and threw him in a second. Abe got up pretty mad. He didn't saj' much, 
but he told somebody that if it ever came right, he would give Bill Clary a good 
licking. You see the hold Jack took was fair in a scuffle, but not in a wrestle, 
and they were wrestling. After that Abe was considered one of the Clary's 



8 A Reporter's Lincoln 

Grove boys. I believe they called him president of their club. Abe and Jack 
got to be great friends and Abe used to stay at Jack's house." 

"Yes," said the Jack Armstrong of the later generation, "I've heard mother 
tell many times how she foxed Mr. Lincoln's pants when he got to be surveyor. 
You see the cloth wouldn't last no time out in the brush and grass and briars 
where surveyors had to tramp. So they used to sew a covering of buckskin on 
the outside of the legs. That was what was called foxing 'em." 



"Abe," volunteered Riley Potter, one of the substantial farmers of Menard, 
"was mighty handy at frolics and parties. Most of the young people would sorter 
hang back, but Abe had a word for everybody, and especially for the smart girls. 
There couldn't any of them get the best of him. He was generally asked to help 
wait on the table and make folks feel sociable. One night Abe was helping the 
visitors and there was a girl there who thought herself pretty smart. When Abe 
got to her he asked her if he should help her. She said she'd take something. 
Abe, he filled up her plate pretty well, and when he passed it to her she says, 
quite pert and sharp, 'Well, Mr. Lincoln, I didn't want a cart-load.' Abe never 
let on that he heard her, but went on helping the others. By and by Liddy got 
through, and when Abe came around her way again she said she believed she'd 
take a little more. 'All right, Miss Liddy,' says Abe loud enough for the whole 
room to hear, 'back up your cart and I'll fill it again.' Of course there was a big 
laugh. Liddy felt awful bad about it. She went off by herself and cried the whole 
evening." 

Uncle Johnny smiled and shook his head when he was asked if "Honest Abe" 
was the name given Mr. Lincoln in Salem days. "I think," he said, "the most of 
us had more confidence in Abe's smartness than in his honesty. When Abe ran 
for the Legislature, the time he was elected, Ned Potter and Hugh Armstrong 
had a pledge from him that he would try to get us cut off and made into a new 
county. You know this used to be a part of Sangamon. The division was the 
big question. We elected Abe on the Whig ticket, although the Democrats had 
the majority. Well, he put our petition in his pocket and didn't do anything for 
us. That is the way I recollect it. Afterward they cut us off and made this 
Menard County. Folks felt pretty sore about the way Lincoln did. He never 
came back here to live, but settled in Springfield and practiced law." 



Lincoln could jump as well as wrestle. During the time that he clerked at 
the store in Salem, Lincoln made the acquaintance of the father of William B. 
Thompson of the St. Louis bar. At Beardstown was located the house of Knapp, 
Pogue & Co., in those days the largest distributing store in that part of Illinois. 
The stocks of goods were brought up the river by steamboat to Beardstown, and 
thence sent out to the small stores in the towns and neighborhoods of several 
counties. The clothing, the groceries and the other supplies reached the farmers 
by that method. A junior partner in the Beardstown house was the father of 
Mr. Thompson. It was his business to visit the scattered stores in the interest 
of his firm. That the elder Thompson was a good deal of an athlete added to his 
prestige with the country people he met on his rounds. Coming to the New 
Salem store, Mr. Thompson met for the first time Abraham Lincoln. As he rode 
up, he noted the number of horses hitched to the rack, and saw that the farmers 
were engaged in the popular amusement of "three jumps." This was an athletic 



Growing Days at New Salem 9 

performance in which Mr. Thompson excelled. The young merchant from 
Beardstown lost no time getting into the game. He was astonished to see the 
new clerk, whom everybody called "Abe," toe the mark, swing forward in three 
standing jumps and pass his own scratch by some inches. As Mr. Thompson 
told the story afterward, this was the first time he had ever been beaten at 
"three jumps." 

An acquaintance between the young merchant and the young clerk ripened 
into friendship. Mr. Lincoln confided to Mr. Thompson his ambition to do some- 
thing more than to jump, and to be something more than a clerk in a country 
store. He said he had formed the purpose to study law and to be a lawyer. He 
asked Mr. Thompson to lend him books. Returning home from New Salem the 
merchant told of this champion jumper who wanted to borrow books, and said 
to his friends that he had never met with any other man who was so anxious to 
read and to inform himself as was young Abe Lincoln. And after subsequent 
meetings, Mr. Thompson expressed to acquaintances his conviction that Mr. 
Lincoln would become one of the best self-educated men in the country. In after 
years Mr. Lincoln was often the guest at the house of Mr. Thompson in Virginia, 
111., when he was attending court at that town. 



In one of the joint debates Senator Douglas referred to Lincoln's clerking 
days at New Salem. He may have meant to be magnanimous in a patronizing 
way, but he really held Lincoln up to ridicule for what he had done twenty-six 
years before. Douglas was making his opening speech in the debate at Ottawa 
when he said: 

"I mean nothing personally disrespectful or unkind to that gentleman. I 
have known him for nearly twenty-five years. There were many points of 
sympathy between us when we first got acquainted. We were both compara- 
tively boys, and both struggling with poverty in a strange land. I was a school- 
teacher in the Town of Winchester and he a flourishing grocery keeper in the 
Town of Salem. (Applause and laughter.) He was more successful in his 
occupation than I was in mine, and hence more fortunate in this world's goods. 
Lincoln is one of those peculiar men who perform with admirable skill every- 
thing w^hich they undertake. I made as good a school-teacher as I could, and 
when a cabinet maker I made a good bedstead and table, although my old boss 
said I succeeded better with bureaus and secretaries than anything else. (Cheers.) 
But I believe that Lincoln was always more successful in business than I, for 
his business enabled him to get in the Legislature. I met him there, however, 
and had a sympathy with him because of the uphill struggle we both had in 
life. He was then just as good at telling an anecdote as now. He could beat 
any of the boys wrestling or running a footrace, in pitching quoits or tossing a 
copper; could ruin more liquor than all the boys in town together. (Uproarious 
laughter.) And the dignity with which he presided at a horse race or a fist fight 
excited the admiration and won the praise of everybody that was present and 
participated." 

When Mr. Lincoln's turn came he made but the briefest reply to what Senator 
Douglas had told about Salem days. He said only: 

"The judge is woefully at fault again about his early friend being a grocery 
keeper. I don't know that it would be a great sin if I had, but he is mistaken. 
Lincoln never kept a grocery in his life. It is true that Lincoln did work the 
latter part of one winter at a little stillhouse up at the head of the hollow." 



10 A Reporter's Lincoln 

With these few words of personal answer to Douglas, Lincoln plunged into 
the discussion of the great national issue of that campaign. 



New Salem folks of Lincoln's time were not numerous in 1886. Mrs. Samuel 
Hill, who was the wife of the principal store-keeper, was one of the most inter- 
esting of the survivors. Of the best Kentucky stock, she was a hale, vigorous old 
lady, and her memory of those days was still vivid. She lived in one of 
the pleasant residences of Petersburg, back on the bluflF overlooking the valley. 

Sitting before a wood fire in her comfortable parlor, Mrs. Hill let her memory 
go back fifty years and more to call up the appearance of Mr. Lincoln on the 
streets of Salem. 

"He went about a good deal of the time without any hat," she said. "His 
hair was long. His yellow tow-linen pants he usually wore rolled up one leg 
and down the other. Many years afterward, when he was a candidate for the 
presidency, the recollection of how he looked in Salem would come up and 
make me laugh in spite of myself." 

"I don't think Mr. Lincoln was overindustrious," Mrs. Hill continued. "My 
husband kept the principal store in Salem, and we lived in a little house close 
by. We had no cellar, and Mr. Hill cut a door in the rear so that I used the 
store cellar. The store was a great gathering place for all the neighborhood. 
When I would be in the cellar churning, or attending to some household matter, 
I could almost always hear Mr. Lincoln's voice and the crowd laughing. In front 
of the store was a kind of shed or porch where the people collected in warm 
weather. I could generally see Mr. Lincoln about when I looked out. He didn't 
do much. His living and his clothes cost little. He liked company, and would 
talk to everybody, and entertain them and himself." 

The conversation turned upon Lincoln's early love afifairs, and Mrs. Hill was 
asked about the story of Ann Rutledge, over whose death Lincoln's mind, it was 
claimed, became unhinged. 

"Lincoln," said Mrs. Hill, "visited at the Rutledges, and he may have thought 
a good deal of Ann. She died of consumption, and after her death there was a 
long rainy spell. Some of Lincoln's friends at that time thought he was a little 
unbalanced, or at any rate they were afraid he would become so. I never thought 
he was so deeply interested in Ann Rutledge, for it wasn't very long after she 
died until he was courting Mary Owens. Mary came from Kentucky to visit 
her sister, Betsy Abies, who was Bennett Abies' wife. They lived near Salem. 
Lincoln was at Bennett Abies' a good deal, and Betsy, who was a great talker, 
and sometimes said more than she ought, perhaps had told Lincoln she was going 
to bring her sister up from Kentucky to marry him. When Mary arrived Lincoln 
told some one he was intimate with that he supposed Mrs. Abies' sister had come 
up to catch him, but he'd show her a thing or two. This friend of Lincoln's was 
also a great friend of the Abies family, and it wasn't long until Mary heard just 
what Lincoln had said. Then she said she would teach him a lesson, and she 
did, too. I don't think they ever became really engaged, for Mary was a woman 
of too much character to go as far as that, and I don't think she ever got very 
much in earnest. She told me once that she didn't. But Mr. Lincoln thought a great 
deal of her, I expect. He used to write to her long after he went to Springfield. 
She finally moved to Weston, in Platte County, Mo., and became the wife of a 
Mr. Vineyard. Mr. Ben Vineyard, the lawyer in St. Joseph, is a son of hers." 



Growing Days at New Salem 11 

Lincoln went to the Blackhawk war and became a captain of the volunteer 
company raised in the Salem neighborhood. In the four years after he came 
trudging into the Salem community, straddling the rail fence and making a "clean 
thing" of the breakfast at Uncle Johnny Potter's, he followed surveying, read law 
and was a successful candidate for the Legislature. Notwithstanding his 
sociability, the years from 22 to 25 had been improved. That first election to 
the Legislature, it is to be remembered, was on the Whig ticket in a district 
where the Democrats were in the majority. Lincoln was learning politics as 
well as a great deal else in the days at Salem. 

J. F. Willson of Tallula, near Petersburg, recalled an incident of Lincoln's 
surveying. A line was being run not far from where the town of Tallula is now. 

"It struck a sugar tree in the center," Mr. Willson said. "As was the custom 
with the surveyors of that time, the tree was marked with three hacks 'fore and 
aft,' as the description ran. Some one of the chain carriers bantered the party 
to show who could make the highest hack on the trunk of the tree. After the 
others had done their best, Lincoln took the ax handle by the end, and, reach- 
ing up, made a hack much higher than any other member of the party. The tree 
stood for more than thirty years afterwards, and was pointed out to visitors with 
Lincoln's high hack upon it. That tree fell soon after Lincoln was assassinated. 
I am not superstitious. I only mention the coincidence." 

Papers which Lincoln made out while he was surveying were preserved for 
many years by the residents of Alenard County, then Sangamon. The Lincoln 
souvenir collectors and the historical societies have gradually gathered most of 
these relics. The plat of the town of Bath was perhaps the most important of 
Lincoln's surveying jobs. 

Upon "Lincoln, the rail-splitter." the Douglas men rang the changes through 
the senatorial campaign of 1858. Two years later Republicans accepted the chal- 
lenge and exploited "Lincoln, the rail-splitter," in convention and in campaign 
with speech and song and story and emblem. Then the biographers, one after 
another, made much of "Lincoln, the rail-splitter." The winter he was 21 Abra- 
ham Lincoln did split rails on his Uncle Hank's farm, near Decatur. He got 50 
cents a hundred. Of that job he told when he was asked about his rail-splitting 
experiences. Coming back from a trip with a boat load of corn and pork to 
New Orleans, Lincoln entered upon his Salem days. Uncle Johnny Potter was 
for many years regarded as the best authority on traditions of Lincoln's life at 
Salem. He could not remember that there was much rail-splitting. 

"Lincoln may have helped split rails when he was visiting some of the neigh- 
bors." Uncle Johnny would say, when asked, "but he didn't make his living by 
it, as they said afterwards, when he was running for president. I believe Abe 
and George Close took a job to cut 1000 rails for somebody over the river one 
time, but that is about the only time I remember of Lincoln's splitting rails." 



The traditions go to show that Lincoln did a variety of work while h'e lived 
among the Salem people, clerking in the stores, helping on the farms in the busy 
seasons and surveying as the country was settled and farmers wanted the lines 
run. And all of the time that he was living the life of the neighborhood he was 
reading, studying and thinking. This thinking was along original lines. It was 
speculative. It showed the mental activity of the young man. Tiiat is the most 
that should be said of it. As the result of his thinking Lincoln advanced views 
or suggestions which formed the basis for one of the Salem traditions that he was 



12 A Reporter's Lincoln 

an infidel. He was a Bible student at the time. One day he startled the crowd 
gathered in the principal store of Salem by producing the manuscript and reading 
his argument that the Bible, as a whole, was not to be believed. He asked the 
advice of his listeners whether the paper should be printed. The keeper of the 
store, Mr. Hill, who had employed Lincoln as a clerk when he needed help, looked 
upon him as he might upon a younger brother. He very promptly replied to the 
argument by saying: 

"Look here, Abe. The best thing you can do is to burn that and not tell 
anybody you ever wrote it." 

With that Mr. Hill took the manuscript from Lincoln's hand and threw it 
into the fire. It is not remembered that Lincoln was particularly disturbed by 
this summary disposition of his argument. The traditions do not evidence that 
he had reached settled convictions on religion. He started discussion, however, 
in the little community, and that was what he liked very much to do. The wife 
of the man who had burned the argument asked Lincoln, "Do you really believe 
there isn't any future state?" And Lincoln, so Mrs. Hill told, replied. "Mrs. Hill, 
I'm afraid there isn't. It isn't a pleasant thing to think that when we die that is 
the last of us." Mrs. Hill thought this unsettled view of religion underwent a 
change after Lincoln moved to Springfield. Upon such incidents as this in his 
Salem days the controversialists, after Lincoln died, built varying opinions as to 
what he thought about religion. 



Giants in Those Days 



Frederick W. Lehmann of St. Louis, one-time solicitor general of the United 
States, said of the "remarkable company of men that followed the procession of 
the courts in Illinois when Lincoln rode the circuit: 

"There were no great corporation lawyers, there was not any great corpora- 
tion business, but there was that which would tend to develop and tend to refine 
more than the exigencies of m,ere commerce would do, and that was the dis- 
cussion of matters involving the human heart and human interests. A friend 
of mine speaking at a banquet in Chicago had been assigned to speak of the old 
bar of Illinois. His father had kept a hotel at Bloomington, and he took as the 
subject of his discourse a page of his father's hotel register on the opening day 
of a term of the court at Bloomington. There was nothing exceptional in the 
occasion; there were none present except those who followed the judges in 
their regular ride of the circuit. Among the not more than fifteen men upon the 
register of that day were James McDougall, who became United States senator 
from California; James Shields, general in two wars and senator from three 
states; E. D. Baker, a major general in the Civil War and senator from Oregon; 
Lyman Trumbull, United States senator, and author of the amendment of the 
constitution abolishing slavery; David Davis, a United States senator and justice 
of the Supreme Court; O. H. Browning, who became a cabinet officer; Stephen 
A. Douglas, a United States senator, and later candidate for the presidency, and 
Abraham Lincoln. Such men as these in that small and undistinguished group 
of country lawyers." 



How He Broke the Quorum 

The grievance of Vandalia agaist Abraham Lincoln has been ameliorated by- 
time. It was acute seventy-five years ago. At that time the residents of the 
ancient capital of Illinois did not smile as they gazed at the windows of the room 
in which the representatives sat. One window in particular became historic. It 
is there to-day, the sill about 14 feet from the ground. Three generations of Van- 
dalians and thousands of visitors have stood in the courthouse yard and along 
the street, imagining how Lincoln looked as he hung by his long arms from that 
window sill, and how far his long legs had to drop to reach the ground. 

Vandalia was the capital of Illinois a score of years. The seat of government 
was moved from Kaskaskia because immigration was settling the Wabash and 
the Sangamon regions. Vandalia was chosen by a commission under an act 
which made the new location the capital for twenty years. At the expiration of 
that period the Legislature was required to determine whether Vandalia or some 
other place should be the capital for the next two decades. 

The old Illinois Statehouse of 1830 became Vandalia's Courthouse. It stands in 
about the same form of architecture it did three-quarters of a century ago, with 
the massive columns and the spacious portico, which were considered indispens- 
able in capitol buildings. Stone sills have been substituted for the wooden 
beneath the windows. The interior has undergone some subdivision and modern- 
izing to make a convenient county courthouse. But the old residents can still 
show where the two branches of the Legislature met that memorable winter when 
Vandalia was trying to hold the capital, and when Springfield was trying to 
cap'ure it. 

There were giants in those days. Sangamon County had sent to the Legisla- 
ture that session two state senators and seven representatives. Springfield had 
picked her best politicians for the supreme eflfort at capital moving. The com- 
bined stature of the Sangamon delegation was 55 feet. "The long nine" as they 
were called, stood for Springfield's hopes. Lincoln furnished 6 feet and 4 inches 
of the aggregate. He was about 25 years old, comparatively unknown to the 
Springfield people who had made up the delegation. His election seems to have 
been a result not contemplated in the capital-moving programme. It came about 
largely by reason of a local issue in Sangamon. The northwest part of Sangamon, 
where Lincoln had been living for years while he clerked and surveyed and helped 
on the farms and pursued his reading and studying, desired to be cut off from 
Sangamon, and to be made a separate county. The movement was popular along 
the lower Sangamon. Water lines were trade routes. These neighbors of Lin- 
coln looked to the Illinois river for their commercial relations with the rest of 
the world. They had little interest in Springfield. Hugh Armstrong and Ned 
Potter were political leaders in that part of Sangamon. They got up a petition to 
have what is now Menard County cut of¥, took from Lincoln a pledge that he 
would make it his business to obtain this legislation if it was possible, and then 
ran him as their candidate. The settlements along the Sangamon in that part of 
the county were strongly Democratic, but on the issue of separation Lincoln, 
although a Whig, was elected and became one of "the long nine." He was new 
in politics. Before the fight for the capital ended he was the leader of "the long 
nine." The service he rendered Springfield paved the way for his removal to the 
new state capital and gave him his start in the practice of law. 



14 A Reporter's Lincoln 

In that Legislature were four men who became United States senators. Two 
of the participants in the capital fight became nominees of their parties for the 
presidency, and one the nominee of his party for the vice-presidency. One of 
them was a general in the Mexican war, and three of them were generals in the 
civil war. The struggle was a long drawn-out game in parliamentary tactics. 
Lincoln's quick wit and physical agility played the winning move. 

Vandalia secured the first advantage in the choice of the presiding officer. 
Springfield carried on a campaign of education. The location of Vandalia, on the 
blufifs of the Okaw, is picturesque. The Springfield missionaries insisted that 
Vandalia was unhealthy and urged removal from the river to the prairie on sani- 
tary grounds. There had occurred several deaths of members of theLegislature 
while the capital was at Vandalia. The Springfield argument attributed the mor- 
tality to the location of the capital. This aroused much indignation among the 
Vandalians. It was not mentioned by later generations without some feeling. 
An old resident remarking upon the iniquity of the charge against the climate of 
Vandalia, said: 

"The trouble was busthead whiskey. I've heard them tell that at Ebenezer 
Capp's store, which was the general resort of the legislators of that time, a barrel 
of liquor was kept with the head knocked out and a dipper hanging on a nail so 
that thirsty members could help themselves. I have seen some of the old accounts 
of Ebenezer showing a bill of $80 for the entertainment of members of the Legis- 
lature a single evening." 

The session wore away without Lincoln being able to do anything with the 
petition to create a new county. All other business except the question of capital 
location was held back. Springfield continued working for votes. On one pre- 
text and another the settlement was postponed. The removal sentiment seemed 
to be gaining. Vandalia people watched closely the attendance; the purpose being 
to force a vote when Springfield absentees might give the advantage. One morn- 
ing the presiding ofificer suddenly laid before the members the question of capital 
location for the next twenty years. The Vandalia members to a man were in their 
seats. Several supporters of Springfield had gone to their homes, but had not re- 
turned. A hurried canvass showed the Springfield members their side was in the 
minority. There was only one way to beat Vandalia, and that was to break the 
quorum. The morning roll call had shown barely a sufficient number to do busi- 
ness. The Springfield men looked toward the door and saw what the plan was. 
There stood the sergeant-at-arms with a force which made exit impossible. 
Clearly the Vandalia people meant to hold the minority until the vote which 
would prevent removal of the capital could be passed. Lincoln was on the floor 
to delay action. It was evident that postponement of the vote would be only 
temporary, and that Vandalia controlled the situation. Lincoln nodded to his 
friends, turned and hurried to the window. A wooden sill at that time projected 
beyond the wall. Before his purpose was understood and before the officers of 
the House could reach him Lincoln stepped out on the sill, let himself down 
until he hung by his hands and dropped to the ground. Several other Springfield 
men followed. Those who remained in their seats raised the point of no quorum. 
That blocked the proceedings. The quorum remained broken until the supporters 
of Springfield reached the capital. Near the close of the session the issue was 
foiced and the Legislature voted to remove the capital to Springfield. Such is 
the Vandalia story of "How Lincoln broke the quorum." When one of the old 
residents tells the story the others smile and say, "Yes, that was the way it was." 



The Duel He Didn't Fight 

The old resident of Alton takes the visitor to the river bank in front of the 
City Hall and, pointing across the Mississippi to an island heavily wooded with 
willows, informs him that there is the "Lincoln-Shields Park." On the 22d of 
September, 1842, the stage coaches rattled down the long valley through tlie bluffs 
of Alton and unloaded an extraordinary passenger list at the Piasa Hotel. The 
people stitting and standing on the wide double galleries of the three-story, hipped 
roof, wooden hotel, looked and wondered as James Shields, the state auditor, 
accompanied by General Whitesides and several other well-known Springfield 
Democrats, stepped down from one coach and went into the hotel. They were 
amazed when another vehicle delivered Abraham Lincoln, the lawyer; E. H. 
Berryman and William Butler. About the same time Elijah Lott and J. J. Hardin 
and several others, well-known public men of Illinois, drove into town. There 
was no hilarity as these groups arrived and entered the hotel. When a bundle of 
the great, clumsy cavalry sabres of that day was lifted carefully down from the 
coach and carried in, the lookers-on began to exchange excited comments. All 
over town went the rumor that a duel was coming off. Leaders of politics in 
Alton, Whigs and Democrats, were taken into confidence by their respective 
friends from the state capital. "Jim" Shields had challenged "Abe" Lincoln and 
they were going across the river to iight on Missouri soil with "broadswords," 
the regulation cavalry sabres of the United States Army. Those were the years 
of "dragoons" in this country. 

The two parties did not waste time at the hotel. It became evident through 
hurried conferences that friends who had learned of the intended meeting had 
followed with the hope of preventing it. Hardin and Lott were two of the 
would-be pacificators. Lincoln and Shields, with their seconds and surgeons, and 
with an attendant carrying the bundle of sabers, left the hotel and walked down 
Piasa street to the river bank, where a ferry with paddle wheels which were driven 
by horses was tied. But expeditious as the movement was, the Altonians, old and 
young, had anticipated it, without any aid from the modern telephone. The 
hotel galleries were crowded, the street was full of people, hundreds stood on the 
river bank. There was difificulty in limiting the number of passengers on the 
ferry boat. The town constable was taken along. Friends who were trying to 
fix up the trouble pressed their way on board. Some prominent Altonians who 
could not well be refused were permitted to go. One newspaper man secured 
passage. He was "Bill" Souther, afterward better known to the history of Illinois 
as William G. Souther. 

The Southcrs were of the earliest New England stock. Their ancestor was 
the first secretary of the Plymouth colony. They had moved to Alton shortly 
before this time and "Bill" Souther was a printer on the Alton Telegraph and 
Democratic Review. He afterward became an editor at Springfield. Other mem- 
bers of the Souther family moved from Alton to St. Louis and established one 
of the great metal industries of that city. "Bill" Souther saw it all, but his paper 
printed not one word from him. Traditions and some recollections written long 
afterward have preserved the facts of this, one of the most remarkable meetings 
under the code on American soil. Thomas M. Hope, Samuel W. Buckmaster and 
Dr. English were of the Alton men who joined in the movement to avert blood- 
shed and to prevent political scandal. 



16 A Reporter's Lincoln 

As soon as the ferry reached the island Mr. Lincoln was taken in one direction 
and Mr. Shields in the other. They were given seats on logs and left to them- 
selves while seconds and peacemakers discussed the situation. In a short time a 
serious defect in the proceedings on the part of Shields came to light. The 
challenge had been sent prematurelJ^ The mistake is explained quite clearly in 
the Alton traditions. Lincoln had amused himself and had entertained the Whigs 
by writing funny letters to a Springfield paper about the Democrats, and signing 
his epistles "Aunt Rebecca." Mary Todd, who afterwards became Mrs. Lincoln, 
and Julia Jayne conspired to add to the gayety of the community by getting up an 
"Aunt Rebecca" letter of their own composition and sending it to the paper along 
with some verses which they signed "Cathleen." The letter which the girls 
wrote went outside of politics and contained a burlesque proposal of marriage 
to Auditor Shields. Now, the auditor, afterward a United States senator from 
three states, and a brave general of two wars, was a fiery young man. While 
Springfield laughed, Shields began an investigation. He demanded of the editor 
the real name of "Aunt Rebecca." The girls became frightened. Bunn, the 
banker, went over to Mr. Lincoln's office and said: 

"We've got into an awful fix?" 

"What's the matter?" asked Lincoln. 

"The girls have written some poetry on Shields," said Bunn. "Didn't you 
see it in the paper? Well, Shields says he won't stand it. What shall we do 
about it?" 

"You go back and when you meet Shields tell him I wrote it," said Lincoln. 

Shields accepted this without verification and sent the challenge. The peace- 
makers, hurrying to Alton, brought the true story of the authorship. The facts 
came out in the conference on the island. Mr. Hope went to Shields and told 
him he would bring disgrace on the Democratic party if he persisted in a meeting 
under such circumstances. The seconds began the interchange of notes. Shields 
saw the error of proceeding further when he learned that Lincoln was not the 
v/riter. For an hour or more the writing and exchanging of notes went on. Mean- 
time the population of Alton stood in a dense mass on the river bank looking 
across the channel and having a good view of all of the movements. "Bill" 
Souther, good reporter that he was, kept his eyes on the principals. He told that 
for some time after the landing Lincoln and Shields sat quietly on their logs. 
Lincoln said nothing, and Souther thought he looked serious. After awhile 
something happened, and Souther said that when he saw it he "nearly blew up." 
The bundle of sabres had been laid down near the log where Lincoln was sitting. 
Lincoln reached out and took up one of the weapons. He drew the blade slowly 
from the scabbard, and Souther said "it looked as long as a fence rail." Holding 
the blade by the back, Lincoln looked closely at the edge, and then, after the 
manner of one who has been grinding a scythe or a corn knife, he began to feel 
gingerly the edge with the ball of his thumb. By this time "Bill" Souther was 
tremendously interested. Holding the sabre by the handle, Lincoln stood up 
and looked about him. He evidently saw what he was looking for in a willow tree 
several feet away. Raising the mighty w^eapon with his long arm, Lincoln reached 
and clipped one of the topmost twigs of the willow. When he had thoroughly 
satisfied himself as to the efficiency of the broadsword he sat down. A few 
minutes later the correspondence was closed on terms "honorable to both parties." 

As the boat put back to Alton the spectators on the bank were horrified to see 
lying prone upon the deck a figure covered with blood, while a well-known 
Altonian leaned over the figure plying a fan vigorously. Not until the boat was close 



The Duel He Didnt Fight 17 

in shore was it seen that the figure was a log of wood and that the "bloody" cov- 
ering was a red flannel shirt. VVentworth dropped the fan, stood up and grinned. 

Lincoln was 6 feet and 4 inches, with an arm length in proportion. Shields 
was 5 feet and 6 inches, chunky and short-limbed. "Bill" Souther marveled much 
over the willow tree exhibition, and wondered how long Shields could have stood 
up against such odds. 

A very sober second thought came to Alton after the first excitement over the 
Shields-Lincoln duel. Alton had one of the best weekly newspapers in the valley. 
The paper was large. It contained much interesting matter. It was called the 
Alton Telegraph and Democratic Review. The presidential campaign was two 
years in the future, but this paper carried at the top of the editorial page "For 
President, Henry Clay." 

The paper came out as usual on the 24th of September, two days after the 
duel. Not one word of what "Bill" Souther saw on the island was printed. Not the 
slightest reference was made to the affair, which was the talk of the town. The 
next issue, on the 1st of October, contained an editorial beginning just below the 
announcement for Henry Clay. The caption of this leader was "Our City," and 
then followed the rest of the sentence and the editor's condemnation, in his sever- 
est style, of the disgraceful affair and his demand for indictment and punishment. 
This editorial was not the least interesting incident of the duel: 

"OUR CITY 
Was the theatre of an unusual scene of excitement during the last week, arising 
from the visit of two distinguished gentlemen of the City of Springfield, who, 
it was understood, had come here with a view of crossing the river to answer the 
'requisitions of the code of honor' by brutally attempting to assassinate each 
other in cold blood. 

"We recur to this matter with pain and the deepest regret. Both are, and 
have been for a long time, our personal friends. Both we have ever esteemed in 
all the private relations of life, and consequently regret that we consider an im- 
perative sense of duty we owe to the public compels us to recur to the disgrace- 
ful and unfortunate occurrence at all. We, however, consider that these gentle- 
men have both violated the laws of the country and insist that neither their 
influence, their respectability nor their private worth should save them from 
being made amenable to those laws they have violated. Both of them are 
lawyers; both have been legislators of the State and aided in the construction of 
laws for the protection of society; both exercised no small influence in the com- 
munity — all of which, in our estimation, aggravates, instead of mitigates, their 
offense. Why, therefore, they should be permitted to escape punishment while a 
friendless, penniless and obscure person for a much less offense, is hurried to the 
cells of our County Jail, forced through a trial with scarcely the forms of law, and 
finally immured within the dreary walls of a penitentiary, we are at a loss to 
conjecture. It is a partial and disreputable administration of justice which, 
though in accordance with the spirit of the age, we most solemnly protest against. 
Wealth, influence and rank can trample upon the laws with impunity, while 
poverty, scarcely permitted to utter a word in its defense, is charged with crime 
in our miscalled temples of justice. 

"Among the catalogue of crimes that disgraces the land, we look upon none 
to be more aggravated and less excusable than that of dueling. It is the calm- 
est, most deliberate and malicious species of murder — a relic of the most cruel 
barbarism that ever disgraced the darkest periods of the world — and one which 



18 A Reporter's Lincoln 

every principle of religion, virtue and good order loudly demands should be put 
a stop to. This can be done only by a firm and unwavering enforcement of the 
law in regard to dueling toward all those who so far forget the obligations they 
are under to society and the laws which protect them as to violate its provisions. 
And until this is done, until the civil authorities have the moral courage to dis- 
charge their duty and enforce the law in this respect, we may frequently expect 
to witness the same disgraceful scenes that were acted in our city last week. 

"Upon a former occasion, when under somewhat similar circumstances our 
city was visited, we called upon the attorney general to enforce the law and bring 
the offenders to justice. Bills of indictment were preferred against the guilty, but 
there the matter was permitted to rest unnoticed and unexamined. The offenders, 
in this instance, as in the former, committed the violation of the law in Spring- 
field, and we again call upon Mr. Attorney General Lamborn to exercise a little 
of that zeal which he is continually putting into requisition against the less 
favored but no less guilty offenders, and bring all who have been concerned in 
the late attempt at assassination to justice. Unless he does it he will prove him- 
self unworthy the high trust that has been reposed in him. 

"How the affair finally terminated, not having taken the trouble to inquire, 
we are unable to say. The friends of Mr. Shields and Mr. Lincoln claim it to 
have been settled upon terms alike honorable to both, notwithstanding the 
hundred rumors, many of which border upon the ridiculous, that are in circula- 
tion. We are rejoiced that both were permitted to return to the bosom of their 
friends, and trust that they will now consider, if they did not do it before, that 
rushing unprepared upon the untried scenes of eternity is a step too fearful in its 
consequencs to be undertaken without preparation. 

"We are astonished to hear that large numbers of our fellow-citiens crossed 
the river to witness a scene of cold-blooded assassination between two of their 
fellow-beings. It was no less disgraceful than the conduct of those who were to 
have been the actors in the drama. Hereafter we hope the citizens of Springfield 
will select some other point to make public their intentions of crossing the 
Mississippi to take each other's life than Alton. Such visits can not but be 
attended not only with regret, but with unwelcome feelings, and the fewer we 
have the better. 

"We should have alluded to this matter last week but for our absence in 
court." 

The Alton Telegraph and Democratic Review was published by J. A. Bail- 
hache & Co. The editor was George T. M. Davis, twice mayor of Alton, who 
afterwards was editor of the New Era in St. Louis. Col. Davis served gallantly 
in the Mexican war and afterwards was prominent in public life at Washington. 
His grandsons became business men in St. Louis. 



Duff Armstrong and the ^'Almanac" 

At a political gathering in the little county of Menard a citizen said to the 
reporter: 

"Do you want to see the man who was tried for murder and cleared by Abe 
Lincoln and an almanac?" 

Thus came about an acquaintance with Dufif Armstrong. DuflE was a stocky 
little man with suspicious gray eyes, a bristling reddish-brown mustache. He 
was standing on the edge of the crowd, listening with a look of patience rather 
than of interest to the orator, when he was called; and he walked away to a more 
retired spot without any apparent regret at leaving the speaking. Upon the pole 
of a wagon which had brought a load of farmers to hear the tariff expounded. 
Duff and the reporter found seats. Duff Armstrong was a reticent man, and 
almost under protest he told the story of the camp-meeting row, of his mother's 
appeal to Lincoln to come and defend him, of Mr. Lincoln's response, of the trial 
and of the introduction of the almanac. 

The man for whose death Duff Armstrong was tried was Press Metzgar. 
A campmeeting ground was the scene of the tragedy. Metzgar had a refreshment 
stand on the outskirts of the camp. There he sold whiskey as well as other things. 
Duff Armstrong, then a young man of eighteen or twenty years, had had some- 
thing to drink at the place. A dispute arose over his demand for more. Metzgar 
refused to serve him unless he paid in advance. Young Armstrong took this as a 
reflection on his solvency. A fight followed as usual under such circumstances. 
Metzgar received wounds from which he died. There were others besides Arm- 
strong in the fight but he was held as the principal responsible for the killing. 
It was not a shooting as the writer of an historical novel described it but the 
death wounds were given with a slung-shot. Witnesses of the fight made it 
appear that Armstrong was the aggressor, and that he beat Metzgar savagely, 
being assisted by a friend. These witnesses testified that they saw the fight 
from a little distance, and gave a minute account of it. They claimed that 
although the time was ten o'clock at night the moon was shining brightly, and it 
was possible to see the combatants almost as plainly as in the daytime. 

"Armstrong," the reporter asked, "tell about the killing. Were you guilty?" 

Duff looked down at the ground, stuck his knife in the sod two or three 
times and said with emphasis: 

"No, I wasn't. Press pitched into me without any cause. I had had a drink 
or two but I knew what I was about. Press was getting the best of me when I 
gave it to him." 

Then Duff told how Mr. Lincoln was brought into the case. His mother 
was known to the whole community as "Aunt Hannah." She had been kind to 
Lincoln when he lived in the Salem neighborhood. Local sentiment about the 
Metzgar affair was against Duff. The man who was indicted as accessory to 
the killing had been given eight years in the penitentiary. In her distress, Aunt 
Hannah wrote to Mr. Lincoln who, at that time, had been living in Springfield 
a dozen or more years. Mr. Lincoln wrote back at once that he would defend 
Duff. He told the family to get a change of venue to Beardstown, on account of 
local prejudice. Tliis was done. He told Aunt Hannah to rely upon him. No- 
body knew what the defense was to be, Duff said. But when the case came to 



20 A Reporter's Lincoln 

trial, Lincoln was there. He questioned the witnesses for the prosecution very 
closely. There were two men who testified to the details of the fight. Mr. 
Lincoln had them describe the positions of the combatants when the slung-shot 
was used; and they made the circumstances look bad for Duf¥. Then he pressed 
them to know how they could testify so accurately and led them into positive 
statements about the moonlight. They described the moon as being about the 
height of the sun at ten in the morning. Mr. Lincoln returned to this again and 
again, and asked the witnesses if they were sure they were not mistaken. As 
often as the question was put, so often they committed themselves. They insisted 
the moon shining down upon the combatants made every movement plain to them. 

Then the almanac was produced. DufT said that Mr. Lincoln passed it to the 
jurors and asked them to see what kind of a night it was on which the fight took 
place and to judge of the accuracy of such testimony as they had heard. The 
almanac was examined. It showed that there was no moonlight such as the 
witnesses had sworn. Mr. Lincoln followed up this advantage with a speech in 
which he tore the testimony to pieces. He argued the theory that Armstrong 
had been attacked and that he had only exerted himself in self defense. He 
told the jurors how he had held "little Duflf" in his arms many a time at the 
Armstrong cabin while Aunt Hannah cooked the meals and he described the 
character of the little chap, as he had seen it forming, in such a way it seemed 
impossible to imagine him as making the assault described by these witnesses 
who had sworn there was a high moon when there was not. Duflf was acquitted. 

"He told mother that he wouldn't charge a cent for defending me, and he 
never did," said Armstrong, as the narrative drew to a conclusion. 

"But, DuflF, what about that almanac?" was asked. "Where did Lincoln get 
it? Was it bogus?" 

The gray eyes flashed. The jack-knife was plunged into the grass roots as 
Armstrong blurted out in an indignant tone: 

"It's all foolishness to talk about Lincoln having had that almanac fixed up 
for the trial. He didn't do anything of the kind. I recollect that after he had 
been asking the witnesses about the moonlight, he suddenly called for an almanac. 
There wasn't any in the courtroom of the year he wanted. So he sent my cousin 
Jake out to find one. Jake went out, and after awhile he came back with the 
almanac. Lincoln turned to the night of the fight at the camp-meeting and it 
showed there wasn't any moon at all that night. Then he showed it to the jury. That 
was all there was to the almanac story. The almanac was all right. I tell you 
he was a mighty smart man and a good one, too." 

Duff Armstrong sold his trotting horse, joined the church and became a 
respected citizen of Menard County. He was always ready to defend Lincoln 
against the tradition of having palmed oflf on the jury a doctored almanac. But 
the tradition lived through two or three generations. Uncle Johnny Potter who 
was an intimate friend of the Armstrongs laughed and shook his head when the 
reporter asked him what the real facts were about the almanac. Some Peters- 
burg people who were at the campmeeting insisted that there was nearly a full 
moon that night in spite of Mr. Lincoln's documentary evidence. Old almanacs 
were overhauled. A search was made for the almanac that Mr. Lincoln had used 
in the courtroom, but it could not be found, so the tradition ran. 



Twenty years ago a wealthy collector of Lincolniana was offered what was 
claimed to be the almanac with which Lincoln cleared Duff Armstrong. The 



Duff Armstrong and the Almanac 21 

trial at Beardstown took place in 1858, a year and a half after the affray. With 
the almanac was furnished a number of affidavits of its genuineness as the one 
used by Lincoln. The collector had no doubt that he was buying the real thing 
and paid a good price for it but nothing like the $1,000 at which the almanac was 
valued. 

Then J. McCan Davis, a lawyer of Springfield, took up the investigation of 
the mystery. He traced the almanac back through several successive owners, 
who had bought it at increasing prices. He talked with lawyers who were con- 
nected with the case. He hunted up the surviving jurors. Mr. Davis said he 
obtained cumulative testimony which entirely satisfied him Mr. Lincoln did not 
use the almanac sold to the Chicago collector. He traced this "Lincoln almanac" 
to a man who claimed to have been a deputy sheriff at the time of the Arm- 
strong trial. This man's story was that he found the almanac in a book he bought 
at a sale of the effects of a somewhat noted Illinoisan named Shaw. A pro- 
longed deadlock occurred in the Illinois Legislature over the senatorship when 
John A. Logan and William R. Morrison were the rival candidates. A vacancy 
occurred in one of the state senatorial districts where the Democrats had a 
normal majority. By a shrewdly managed still hunt, which is a chapter in 
Illinois political history, the Republicans elected Shaw to the Legislature and 
Logan was chosen senator by this narrow margin. Shaw died and when his 
library was sold this "Lincoln almanac" was discovered. The man who found 
it claimed that Shaw had been in some way connected with the Armstrong case. 
And thus the chain was begun. The collector who bought the almanac was a 
shrewd business man. He had no doubt of the genuineness of his relic. The 
almanac was of the issue of 1854. By skillful pen work the "4" was changed into 
a "7", making the almanac appear to have been issued in 1857, the year of the 
affray at the campmeeting. 

But Mr. Davis did more than trace the almanac to its source. He went to 
the best astronomical records and learned that Mr. Lincoln had no need to take 
any other year in order to obtain almanac evidence to impeach the witnesses 
against Duff Armstrong. The genuine almanac for 1857 showed there was no full 
moon on the night of the affray. There was a new moon, Mr. Davis said, about 
two days old. Instead of being in the east where the sun would be at ten o'clock 
in the morning, as the witnesses testified, it was, at the hour of the fight, almost 
setting in the west. 



Brand of Whiskey Grant Drank 

A Lincoln story which will never die is the reply the president made to the 
criticism of Grant's habits. Lincoln said: "He wished he knew what brand of 
whiskey Grant drank, in order that he might send some to the other generals." 
The story survives and is oft told, but the circumstances which prompted Lin- 
coln's remark are not so well remembered. A St. Louis man brought that story 
from Washington. He was Henry T. Blow. His home was in Carondelet, now 
the southern part of the city, but then a separate municipality. Mr. Blow knew 
Gen. Grant when he was Capt. Grant. The Blows and Dents were acquainted, 
socially. Although a Virginian, Mr. Blow had become first an emancipationist, 
then a Republican and at the outbreak of the war an ardent Union man. Mr. 
Blow was sent to Venezuela as United States minister. He did not like Caracas 
and came back to Missouri within the year to run for Congress. After enter- 



22 A Reporter's Lincoln 

ing upon this campaign, in which he was successful, Mr. Blow visited Washington 
and talked with the president on conditions in the West. The battle of Pitts- 
burg Landing, or Shiloh, had been fought and almost lost. Three months before 
the country had dubbed the victor of Fort Donelson "Unconditional Surrender" 
Grant and had made a hero of him. Now, with the disputed responsibility for 
the Pittsburg Landing surprise, there arose a mighty clamor on the part of cer- 
tain newspapers and politicians, that Grant be superseded. Mr. Blow talked freely 
with the president. He told him what he had known of Grant before the war 
and mentioned the fear entertained by some persons that Grant drank too much 
to be intrusted with high command. Mr. Blow was a smooth spoken man, with 
sharp black eyes, quick to appreciate humor. He had been a very successful 
business man for years before he became interested in politics. He was rather 
below the average height. President Lincoln listened thoughtfully until Mr. 
Blow had expressed himself, and then asked with apparent seriousness what 
brand of whiskey Grant drank. Explaining why he sought the information, he 
used the language about sending some to the other generals, which has become 
historic. Mr. Blow lost no time in starting the story on its rounds. The 
criticism of Grant's habits seemed to lose its force rapidly, as the story was 
spread. 



Captain Henry King's Experience 

Who wrote Lincoln's speeches? That was a topic of discussion in the days 
before the country had come to know the man. Frederick W. Lehmann of 
St. Louis said: 

"Captain Henry King, for many years the well-known editor of the Globe- 
Democrat, a master in the use of language, had an experience which is enlighten- 
ing. As a young newspaper man he had been assigned to report a speech of 
Mr. Lincoln. He had been greatly impressed with it, with its sentiment and 
expression. He made his report of it in the best style that he could command, 
using the words that he thought Mr. Lincoln ought to have used. He submitted 
the report to Mr. Lincoln, very proud of his accomplishment. Mr. Lincoln looked 
over it carefully and said, 'Young man, you made a most excellent report of this 
but I think you did not quite get my language here and there.' And he went 
through with it, changing back the words to the simple Saxon that he had 
himself used so well. Captain King said he was unable to recognize what he 
had written. 

"There were men older than Captain King who tried to edit what Mr. 
Lincoln said," continued Mr. Lehmann, "Seward looked over the manuscript of 
the inaugural address, criticised it with some severity, and actually insisted on 
striking out the last clause as too sentimental for such an occasion. Mr. Lin- 
coln always had faith in himself, where principle or sentiment was involved, 
and that clause often attributed to Mr. Seward, but which he did not write, but 
considered inappropriate remained, in which Mr. Lincoln made this appeal to his 
southern friends, 'We are friends, we are not enemies. We must not be enemies. 
Though passion may have strained, it must not break the bonds of our affection. 
The mystic chords of memory stretching from every patriotic grave and battle- 
field to every loving heart and hearthstone throughout this broad land, will yet 
swell the music of the Union when touched, as they surely will be, by the better 
angels of our nature.' " 



The "New Party" of the Fifties 

Ira Haworth was one of the young men Lincoln selected to help him start 
the Republican party. The Haworths were pioneers in Illinois. One of them 
founded the City of Danville. Another member of the family started George- 
town. Ira Haworth grew up in Vermilion County, where as a boy he came to 
know and reverence Lincoln. 

The Haworths were Quakers. When past eighty Ira Haworth had the placid 
look which made him the youngest-appearing octogenarian in Kansas. The Lin- 
colns back several generations were Quakers. Between Abraham Lincoln and Ira 
Haworth's father in the forties there was correspondence on the iniquity of slavery. 

"I first met Mr. Lincoln at the boarding house of old Mrs. Carruthers in 
Danville, where he was stopping while attending court," Mr. Haworth said. "Mr. 
Lincoln didn't show at first all that was in him. He grew on you as you came to 
know him well. He was very tall, 6 feet and 4 inches in his bare feet. While he 
looked spare, he was muscular. He weighed 180 pounds. His hair was very 
dark brown and of coarse growth. His eyes were hazel, tending to a grayish hue 
in color, deep set, with a serious expression, which changed quickly to a twinkle 
at the prospective introduction of a joke or a story. Lincoln's nose was of more 
than medium size and of the Roman type. The mouth was large and lips firm, of 
medium thickness. The features were rather large to attract admiration. Lin- 
coln's demeanor was that of extreme simplicity, with deliberate movements, and 
a mixture of cordiality and dignity." 



Mr. Haworth said that Lincoln had no desire to go back to Congress after the 
term to which he was elected in 1846 by the Whigs; that he found the surround- 
ings in Washington uncongenial. He believed from his association with Lincoln 
that the latter began early the consideration of plans for the formation of the 
Republican party. 

"The campaign of 1848 was closely contested," Mr. Haworth said, as he de- 
scribed this evolution of a new party in Mr. Lincoln's thoughts. "Lincoln took 
an active part that year, presenting the issues that were agitating the public 
mind. He achieved reputation not only in Illinois, but in neighboring States, 
through that campaign. The result of the campaign was the election of the 
Whig ticket, but within four years the Whig party had gone to pieces. Lincoln 
wrote to me to call a caucus in my county to consider the advisability of forming 
a new party. I sent out a call and six of us met to talk over the proposition. We 
organized, elected officers, talked over the plan and adjourned with the under- 
standing we would get a larger attendance for the next meeting. The work of 
starting the new party was arduous. The anti-slavery party discouraged the 
movement by urging those who were then without a party to join their ranks. 
The old Democratic party was in possession of the government, so well fortified 
that the leaders were defiant and uncompromising toward the slavery agitators. 
Those Wigs who were originally in favor of slavery extension joined the Demo- 
cratic oligarchy, which received them joyfully." 

Mr. Haworth described graphically the slow, discouraging progress made in 
the first few months with the organization of the Republican party in Illinois. 
Lincoln, as Mr. Haworth recalled those earliest efforts, was the head of the move- 
ment. To increase the interest the few original Republicans in each locality 



24 A Reporter's Lincoln 

invited ladies to their meetings and endeavored to interest them. This was a 
decided novelty in politics. Lincoln carried on correspondence M^ith his young 
acquaintances in the various counties, and pressed the organization by counties 
preparatory to a convention to form the state organization. Haworth was so 
active that he was afterwards given the title of "father of the Republican party" 
in his part of the state. 



The biographers of Lincoln say that he gave little attention to politics in the 
early fifties. They seem to have derived this impression from the contemporaries 
of Lincoln who were themselves prominent in politics of those years. But Lin- 
coln, by the testimony of Haworth and others, who were young and scarcely 
known outside of their school districts in 1852-55, was very busy in politics. He 
was creating the Republican party of Illinois even before the name had been 
chosen. He was writing letters to young men who had just reached their majori- 
ties, or were about coming of age. He was going out from Springfield to little 
gatherings at schoolhouses and country stores, talking about the new party and 
outlining what principles it should build upon. He was scribbling tentative plat- 
forms. The old Whig leaders at the state capital and at the county seats were 
wondering what was going to happen, and waiting for some kind of a revelation 
of public drift. Lincoln, paying little heed to the leaders, was making sentiment 
with the people, organizing from the neighborhood and the school district up- 
ward. He was constructing the Republican party of Illinois. The man who was 
so handy with the manual tools that he could turn out cabinet work was putting 
together mentally the framework of a political organization, which, at the end 
of the decade, was to sweep the country. And he was doing it so quietly and with 
so little surface indication that the politicians did not appreciate what was going 
on; they thought "Abe Lincoln" had gone out of politics and was giving his whole 
attention to law business. They never did realize, as did Haworth and the other 
young unknowns to whom Lincoln had given the commissions of local arganizers, 
the constructive work done by him long before the Bloomington convention was 
called to form the state organization. Two new ideas Lincoln developed in this 
political creation. He converted and encouraged young men new in politics. His 
suggestion brought into the little meetings and gave prominence to women. The 
great moral issue appealed strongly to the feminine sympathy. Women turned 
out in numbers to these school district meetings of the new party. They entered 
upon the new party movement with enthusiasm. They had become a great 
political force in Illinois when the campaign of 1860 opened. They rode in the 
processions. They sang, they laughed and they cried for "Old Abe." And their 
interest dated back to those neighborhood gatherings which Lincoln had pro- 
moted in the counties of Central Illinois when the politicians thought he was giv- 
ing all of his time and thought to the practice of the law. Thus Abraham Lincoln 
and the people created the Republican party in Illinois. The political leaders 
came in when the ground swell rifted them, and many of them never did quite 
realize how it all came about. 



In tlie vault of one of the Kansas City, Kan., banks were long preserved as 
articles of great value a cane and a gavel, made of black walnut, handsomely turned 
by the lathe and adorned with metal bands. The cane was inscribed across the 
top, "Ira Haworth," and around the head, "Abraham Lincoln," with the word, 
"presented." 



The "New Party" of the Fifties 25 

"When Lincoln's nomination was announced to the convention at Chicago," 
said Mr. Haworth, who was one of the Illinois delegates, "two stalwart ushers 
entered the door of the wigwam bearing on their shoulders a unique design. They 
carried two walnut fence rails, decorated with the national colors. Supported by 
the rails was an immense shield, and on the shield was a large picture of Lincoln. 
As the men slowly made their way up the densely packed aisle, with excitement 
already high, the audience went wild. Hats were thrown in the air; handker- 
chiefs were waved vigorously. The shouts made a deafening roar. The people 
arose to their feet and cheered the progress of the rails and the picture through 
the wigwam until the design was placed upon the platform. 

"The rails used on that occasion," said Mr. Haworth, "were made by Mr. 
Lincoln in what was then Sangamon County, when he was 20 or 21 years old. 
They had been in use twenty years on the farm of John Hanks, who was Lincoln's 
uncle, until they were transported to Chicago, to be used if Lincoln was nom- 
inated. While John Hanks produced the rails and testified to their genuineness, 
the idea of using them in connection with the nomination was not his. Richard J. 
Oglesby and Richard Yates orignated the plan." 

Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Haworth thought, had no part in the rail incident. He was 
in the Republican movement because of the principles it represented. But Lin- 
coln was too good a politician to discourage the use of the rails when he saw how 
his rail-splitting record appealed to the every-day human interest. 

"Mr. Lincoln," said Mr. Haworth, "obtained one of these rails of his own 
splitting and had made for me the cane and gavel which you see. The two were 
sent to me at Danville by express. The next time I met Mr. Lincoln, I thanked 
him for the remembrance. He said he had sent me the cane thinking I would 
have use for it when I became old. 'You know,' he added, 'the wicked generally 
do live to become old.' Referring to the gavel Mr. Lincoln said to me: 'I want 
you to arrange to go into the campaign for me.' I said: 'Mr. Lincoln, I always 
thought you a man of judgment.' He replied: 'Take these relics and go before 
the people explaining how you got them.' Well, the result was I arranged matters 
so as to leave the farm and went through the counties in my part of the State 
holding meetings at the schoolhouses. A man went ahead of me making appoint- 
ments, I drove from schoolhouse to schoolhouse, holding three or four meetings 
a day, showing the gavel and the cane and telling the story about them. In thirty 
days, by the account I kept, I attended over 100 of these meetings. In the same 
time, according to a record made, there were at these meetings over 1000 changes 
of Democrats to become Republicans. That was the way we swept Illinois for 
Lincoln." 

After that campaign his neighbors in Vermilion called Mr. Haworth "the 
father of the Republican party." When he moved away in 1870 to settle in Kansas, 
a farewell meeting was held and Mr. Haworth was given the title of "the grand- 
father of the Republican party" of Vermilion. 

"I suppose that now I am entitled to be called one of the great-grandfathers 
of the Republican party," said Mr. Haworth, with a twinkle of the eyes. 



"I never saw Mr. Lincoln drink liquor," said Mr. Haworth. "In 1847 he 
made an address in which he declared his fidelitj' to the cause of temperance. 
He then pledged his assistance to its advancement in all future time. His asser- 
tions attracted me and made a profound impression on me, for I had been a total 
abstainer. Having found a public man thinking as I did about temperance, for 



26 A Reporter's Lincoln 

that was unusual in those days, I became attached to him in no ordinary degree. 
The two great subjects of slavery and temperance led to an acquaintance with 
Mr. Lincoln by which I gained much as a young man. Lincoln was at heart a 
Christian. 'Whatever appears to be God's will, I will do it,' he said to a deputa- 
tion representing different religious denominations which called upon him at the 
White House in September, 1862. That was his guiding principle all of the time 
I knew him. His influence over younger men who made his acquaintance was 
very strong and for much good. I have always felt that I was more indebted to 
him for my course in life than to any other person. Mr. Lincoln had wonderful 
self command. He told me on one occasion that he had never in his life been 
really angry. His motives in the work he did to create the Republican party in 
Illinois were of the highest character. Previous to the meeting of the convention 
in Chicago, which nominated him in 1860, Mr. Lincoln was approached by persons 
who wished to be empowered to promise certain things in return for support. 
Mr. Lincoln replied, 'No, gentlemen. I have not sought the nomination. Neither 
will I attempt to buy it with pledges. If I shall receive the nomination and be 
elected, I shall not go into office as the tool of this or that man, or the property 
of any faction or clique. The people's choice will be my choice. I desire that the 
result shall be to keep the jewel of liberty in freedom's family.' " 



A Drink and a Sunrise 



In 1859 B. F. Smith was a young brakeman on the Illinois Central railroad. 
Afterward he became one of the pioneers in the development of berry culture in 
Southern Illinois. He made Centralia famous and was known far and wide as 
"Strawberry" Smith. Still later he moved to Kansas, helped to bring Lawrence 
into high repute as a fruit center, and published for many years a horticultural 
journal. Mr. Smith had these personal experiences with the two most talked 
of men in Illinois. 

"Senator Douglas rode with me in the brakeman's seat from Odin to 
Champaign one trip in 1859. He offered me a cigar, which I refused, saying 
that I had never learned to smoke. At Champaign he took a seat in the second- 
class car, next to the baggage car. Here he emptied a small bottle of liquor into 
his stomach, or nearly all of it. When I went through the car at Chicago, he 
roused up before his friends came to meet him and offered me a drink from 
his bottle, which I refused. It seemed strange to him for a railway brakeman 
to refuse to smoke or drink with him. 

"The other distinguished man who rode with me about that time was 
Abraham Lincoln. He sat in my seat on the run from Champaign to Tolono. 
It was about sunrise. There was only one farm then between those two stations, 
in 1859, all green prairie. A beautiful sun rising attracted Mr. Lincoln. He called 
my attention to it, — the sun just rising over those beautiful, undulating hills. He 
wanted me to share with him his admiration of the scene. I admitted that it was 
lovely. I had been seeing the sun rise every morning between those two stations, 
as we left Chicago at 9 p. m., and hadn't thought much about the beauty of it. 
Mr. Lincoln had been asleep until we reached Champaign. Well the moral of this 
is in the contrast of the two great men. One of them tempted me by offering a 
cigar at the beginning of the journey and at the end of it desired me to help him 
emptj-- a bottle of whiskey. The other called my attention to that beautiful sun- 
rise over the virgin prairies of Illinois and invited me to share with him the 
impression of it." 



The Eighth Circuit 



"The eighth circuit" and Mr. Lincoln's relation to it perhaps have had no 
counterpart in the history of the American bar. When this circuit was organized 
in 1847 it had fourteen counties, occupying the central part of Illinois, around 
Bloomington. As immigration from the North and South flowed in, the circuit 
was graduallj^ reduced in area. But even after his own County of Sangamon was 
taken out Lincoln continued to practice and to be a strong personality in the 
eighth circuit. In each county of the circuit two terms of court were held 
yearly. Mr. Lincoln spent about half of the year attending these terms of court 
away from his home. He continued to attend the eighth circuit terms after 
other lawyers had ceased to "ride the circuit." He was present at the spring terms 
of the circuit in 1860, a few weeks before his nomination to be president. And 
after his election it was necessary for him to visit Bloomington to make disposi- 
tion of the cases in which he was retained. This peculiarly close relationship 
of Mr. Lincoln to the eighth circuit bore upon his political as well as upon his 
legal career. In the eighth circuit he won the reputation of being the best jury 
lawyer of Illinois. In the eighth circuit he organized the movement which led to 
the Republican party of Illinois. In the eighth circuit he won the influential and 
steadfast political friends who brought about his nomination for the presidency. 

To Bloomington for the terms of court in the early days of the eighth circuit 
came with Lincoln Edwin D. Baker, afterward a United States senator from 
Oregon; James A. McDougal, afterward United States senator from California; 
Stephen A. Douglas, Linitcd States senator from Illinois; Judge Stephen T. 
Logan of Springfield; Daniel W. Voorhees, afterward a United States senator 
from Indiana; Judge Usher, afterward secretary of the interior; Norman H. 
Purple of Peoria, and T. Lyle Dickey of Ottawa, both of them afterward judges 
of the Supreme Court. David Davis was ten years judge of this circuit. 



The late Ezra M. Prince of Bloomington, secretary of the local Historical 
Society, in a paper written some time before his death, described the customs 
and conditions which prevailed. 

"The relations between the court, lawyers, jurors, of the eighth circuit was 
peculiar, one that has long since passed away," Mr. Prince said: "The court was 
rather a big family consultation, presided over by the judge, than a modern court. 
Judge Davis personally knew a large portion of the people in the circuit. The 
jurors were then selected by the sheriff. In McLean, and probably in the other 
counties, substantially the same jurors appeared from term to term, personal 
friends of Judge Davis, men of intelligence, sound judgment and integrity, whose 
verdicts rarely had to be set aside. Court week was a holiday for the people of 
the county. Political years there was always speaking at the courthouse, the 
parties using it on alternate nights. The people attended court to get the news, 
hear the speeches, listen to the exciting trials and to do their trading. The 
lawyers and many of the jurors, witnesses and suitors stopped at the same tavern. 

"There was a singular comradeship of these attendants upon the court. With- 
out the court at all losing its dignity, there was a freedom and familiarity as of 
old friends and acquaintances meeting upon a public occasion, rather than the 



28 A Reporter's Lincoln 

formality and dignity associated with the idea of a modern court. Often the 
judge's room, which sometimes was the only decent one in the tavern, was used 
evenings by the lawyers in their consultations, without regard to the presence 
of the judge. 

"In several, perhaps all, of these counties, young lawyers who desired to 
avail themselves of Mr. Lincoln's popularity and who, perhaps, distrusted their 
own ability to prepare and try cases in the circuit court, arranged with Mr. Lin- 
coln to allow them to advertise him as their partner. So there was Lincoln & 
Jones in this county and Lincoln & Smith in that; but the partnership was limited 
simply to Lincoln trying Smith's and Jones' cases, if they had any, and dividing 
fees with them. The only law partners, in the proper acceptance of the term, Mr. 
Lincoln ever had were his Springfield partners, Col. John T. Stuart early in his 
legal career, and later William H. Herndon. Mr. Herndon never traveled the 
circuit. Mr. Lincoln was always a great favorite with the court, lawyers and all 
attendants upon the court. The young and inexperienced received from him wise 
and timely advice and aid in their cases. The trial of cases was conducted almost 
entirely by these leaders of the circuit. Mr. Lincoln being on one side or the 
other of nearly every case tried. A crowd always gathered around him, whether 
in court or elsewhere, expecting the never-failing 'story.' The evenings were a 
contest of wits, for the pioneer lawyer always had a good story ready. These 
customs of the circuit made its leaders warm friends." 



After most of the other lawyers had given up the practice of riding the 
circuit Leonard Swett continued it with Mr. Lincoln. There developed between 
Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Swett a very close personal relationship. Mr. Swett, some 
time before his death, speaking of this friendship, said: "It seems to me I have 
tried a thousand lawsuits with or against Lincoln and I have known him as 
intimately as I have known any man in my life." 

Letters of Lincoln to Swett are in the possession of Bloomington friends. 
Some of them indicate the confidential character of the relations between the two, 
especially during the presidential campaign of 1860. 

With Mr. Lincoln's practice in the eighth circuit developed the acquaintance 
and grew the leadership which made him the master spirit in the formation of the 
new political party. No other location than Bloomington for the anti-Nebraska 
convention, not even Springfield, would have made easier Mr. Lincoln's guiding 
influence. From Bloomington, among the men who had known him most inti- 
mately in the years of the eighth circuit practice, started the movement to make 
Mr. Lincoln the nominee of the Republicans in 18G0. 

Jesse W. Fell of Bloomington began the detail work of organizing Illinois 
for Lincoln immediately after the defeat for the United States Senate in 1858. 
He had been secretary of the Republican committee during that 1858 campaign. 
The first serious, active movement in Mr. Lincoln's candidacy was this effort of 
Mr. Fell. A better man for the undertaking there was not in Illinois. Mr. Fell 
had come to Bloomington in 1832 from his Quaker home in Pennsylvania. Giving 
up the law and going into development business, he had founded the first news- 
paper of Bloomington, had been instrumental in the establishment of the first 
library. He had planted 13,000 trees in the suburb of Normal before there was 
a house built. He had secured the Normal University. He was the pioneer 
horticulturist and arboriculturist of Illinois. He gave the names of trees to 
twenty streets. Consistently refusing ofifice for himself, Mr. Fell became the 



The Eighth Circuit 29 

devoted admirer and friend of Mr. Lincoln. There was no limit to Mr. Fell's 
industry when he set about the accomplishment of a purpose. In his avowed 
intention to make Mr. Lincoln the nominee for president he had the constant 
advice and aid of two other residents of Bloomington, both lawyers, who became 
of national prominence. One of them was Leonard Swett, a tall, dark, hand- 
some man from Maine, whose magnetic presence and melodious eloquence had 
won for him the title of "the advocate of the West." The third member of this 
Bloomington triumvirate, determined to secure the nomination of Mr. Lincoln, 
was the heavy weight, the man of great mental strength whose sagacity the whole 
state of Illinois respected, David Davis. No man in politics ever had more loyal, 
more intelligent attention to his interests than these three Bloomington men gave 
to the candidacy of Mr. Lincoln. Their attachment to him was something 
phenomenal in politics. With his newspaper instincts and his inclination to pro- 
motion methods, Mr. Fell put in early operation at Bloomington a press bureau. 
At the instance of Mr. Fell, and as the result of not a little persuasion, Mr. Lin- 
coln sat down to a table in the courtroom at Bloomington and wrote the 
autobiography of himself which is historic. He did this in 1859. The first use 
Mr. Fell made of the sketch was to send a copy of it to a paper in Pennsylvania, 
his early home, with the' information that this was the man whose joint debates 
with Douglas had aroused the whole country, and the man whose name Illinois 
would, in all probability, present to the Republican Convention of 1860. 



"Strikingly characteristic of Mr. Lincoln was the closing sentence of that 
autobiography," the former vice-president, Adlai E. Stevenson, said. When Mr. 
Lincoln had completed the story of his life, he wrote, "No other marks or brands 
recollected." This was the usual form in which legal notices of animals "strayed 
or stolen" concluded in the northern states, while it was not infrequently 
employed in the South, especially Kentucky, for a notice of a "runaway slave." 
This sentence was the touch of humor which Mr. Lincoln added to an account of 
his life, straightforward, definite and concise. Mr. Lincoln, his Bloomington 
friends said, neither made capital of his self-made qualities, nor did he conceal the 
hardships of his early life. He drew often on his experiences with his wonderful 
memory to illustrate some point or thought he wished to convey. He did not talk 
of himself for his sake any more than he told stories because they were good 
stories. If Mr. Fell hadn't been the extraordinarily persevering man that he 
was, it is probable the story of Lincoln by Lincoln, would never have been 
written. To show what kind of a man Jesse W. Fell was, it is said of him in 
Bloomington that when he went into the office of Judge Davis one day, that 
sturdy "prairie farmer" called out loud enough for all in the room to hear: "Oh, 
here's Fell again. No, I can't do it. But it's no use to talk; you'll have me before 
you go away." Mr. Fell pressed Mr. Lincoln for this account of himself until he 
got him seated at a desk in the courthouse and saw the story put on paper. Mr. 
Lincoln wrote this, as he did his letters and his law papers, with very few changes 
and with seldom a pause to think. He wasted no words. 



"I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Ky. My parents were both 
born in Virginia, of undistinguished families — second families, perhaps I should 
say. My mother, who died in my 10th year, was of a family of the name of 
Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams and others in Macon County, 111. 



30 A Reporter's Lincoln 

My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, 
Va., to Kentucky about 1781 or 1782, where a year or two later he was killed by 
the Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm 
in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks 
County, Pa. An efifort to identify them with the New England family of the 
same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names 
in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like. 

"My father, at the death of his father, was but 6 years of age, and he grew up 
literally without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer 
County, Ind., in my 8th year. We reached our new home about the time the state 
came into the Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild 
animals still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so-called, 
but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond 'readin', writin' and 
cipherin' ' to the rule of three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin 
happened to sojourn in the neighborhood he was looked upon as a wizard. There 
was absolutely nothing to incite ambition for education. Of course, when I came 
of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write and cipher to 
the rule of three, but. that was all. I have not been to school since. The little 
advance I now have upon this store of education I have picked up from time to 
time under the pressure of necessity. 

"I was raised to farm work, which I continued till I was 22. At 21 I came to 
Illinois, Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, at that time in Sangamon, 
now in Menard County, where I remained a year as a sort of clerk in a store. 

"Then came the Blackhawk war; and I was elected a captain of volunteers, a 
success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since. I went the 
campaign, was elated, ran for the Legislature the same year (1832), and was 
beaten — the only time I ever have been beaten by the people. The next and three 
succeeding biennial elections I was elected to the Legislature. I was not a candi- 
date afterward. During this legislative period I had studied law, and removed to 
Springfield to practice it. In 1846 I was once elected to the lower house of 
Congress. Was not a candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive, 
practiced law more assiduously than ever before. Always a Whig in politics, and 
generally on the Whig electoral tickets, making active canvasses. I was losing 
interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri compromise aroused me again. 
What I have done since then is pretty well known. 

"If any personal description of me is thought desirable it may be said I am, 
in height, 6 feet 4 inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing on an average 180 pounds; 
dark complexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes. No other marks or brands 
recollected." 



This, the only story of his life Lincoln wrote, he dated "Springfield, December 
20, 1859," although the late Lawrence Weldon, Jesse W. Fell and the other Bloom- 
ington friends of Mr. Lincoln said it was written in the courthouse under the 
circumstances already given. Mr. Lincoln signed the story, just as he always did 
his name, "A. Lincoln." Mr. Fell, with the wisdom of a newspaper man, preserved 
and published the story exactly as Mr. Lincoln wrote it. 



The Bloomington Convention 

The cradle of the Republican party of Illinois was Major's Hall, in Blooming- 
ton. It rocked May 29, 1856. The hand that rocked the cradle was Abraham 
Lincoln's. 

The third story, which was the hall, was removed. There was apprehension 
about the strength of the walls after the place had served as the principal 
auditorium for two generations of Bloomingtonians. Major's Hall became 
Bloomington's historic landmark. The convention which created the Republican 
party of Illinois is Bloomington's political glory. 

Painstakingly and intelligently Bloomington assembled, through an historical 
society of more than ordinary virility, the record and the recollections of that 
convention. More than the surface proceedings — more than the public events 
— have been sought. The hitherto unwritten history has been secured. And thus 
has come to be known the part that Abraham Lincoln performed in the planning 
for the convention, in the framing of the platform, in the selection of the candi- 
dates. Before they passed away the men who participated in the Bloomington 
convention and in the conferences and consultations preceding it gave to the 
Bloomington Historical Society their recollections. The results are revelations 
of Lincoln's active agency in the shaping of the Republican party movement in 
Illinois that add much to hitherto printed history. 



The Bloomington convention grew directly out of a conference of fifteen 
editors and Abraham Lincoln at Decatur on Washington's birthday. Those who 
attended the conference called it the "Free State Editorial Convention." The 
call for the conference read: 

"All editors in Illinois opposed to the Nebraska bill are requested to meet in 
convention at Decatur on the 22d of February next, for the purpose of making 
arrangements for the organization of the anti-Nebraska forces in this state for 
the coming contest." 

The number of papers in Illinois which editorially indorsed the movement 
was twenty-five. The editors of this number of papers signed the call for the 
meeting. A heavy snowfall the night before cut down the attendance to fifteen. 
Mr. Lincoln arrived from Springfield. Paul Selby of the Morgan Journal, who 
presided, was authority for this statement: 

"The most important work of the convention was transacted through the 
medium of the committee on resolutions. Mr. Lincoln was in conference with 
the committee during the day, and there is reason to believe that the platform 
reported through Dr. Charles H. Ray of the Chicago Tribune, the chairman, and 
adopted by the convention, bears the stamp of Mr. Lincoln's peculiar intellect." 

The editors recommended that a delegate convention be held at Bloomington 
on Thursday, the 29th day of May. They appointed a state central committee to 
make arrangements for the convention. Most of those named as the committee 
accepted the appointment. The committee met and issued the call, which 
announced: 

"A state convention of the anti-Nebraska party in Illinois will be held in the 
City of Bloomington, on Thursday, the 29th day of May, 1856, for the purpose of 



32 A Reporter's Lincoln 

choosing candidates for state officers, appointing delegates to the national con- 
vention, and transacting such other business as may properly come before the 
body." 

Ten members of the committee which the fifteen editors had selected, signed 
this call. One of them was Mr. Lincoln's law partner. Another was Richard J. 
Oglesby, the young lawyer, who had presided at the banquet given to the editors 
at Decatur. Purposely the editors did not give a name to the new party. On 
the day that this conference was in progress at Decatur there was in session at 
Pittsburg a gathering of men from several states assembled "for the purpose of 
perfecting the national organization, and providing for a national delegate con- 
vention of the Republican party to nominate candidates for the presidency and 
vice-presidency." Not only did Illinois editors refrain from calling their move- 
ment "Republican," but the committee they appointed to bring into existence 
the Bloomington convention, did not make use of the word "Republican." 
Abraham Lincoln was a wise politician. The time had not come to name the 
child. 



Mr. Lincoln did not participate openly in the proceedings of the editorial 
convention, but he was near at hand for consultation. In the evening a local 
committee of Decatur citizens — Isaac C. Pugh, who was afterwards colonel of 
the Forty-first Illinois; Dr. H. C. Johns, who died about fifteen years ago, and 
Maj. E. O. Smith — provided a banquet to the editors and several invited guests 
at the Cassell House. Mr. Lincoln attended the banquet and made the principal 
address. One of the editors, who preceded Mr. Lincoln on the list of speakers, 
suggested him as the most available man to be nominated for governor and to head 
the new party in Illinois. Mr. Lincoln, replying to the reference to himself, 
argued that it would be much better to nominate an anti-Nebraska Democrat 
for governor rather than an old-line Whig like himself, pointing out that it 
would be necessary for the new movement to draw from the Democrats and to 
widen the breach between the Douglas following and the Democrats who were 
opposed to Douglas in his Kansas-Nebraska policy. He concluded this argument 
with the opinion that William H. Bissell was the most available man for the 
nomination. This advice the convention at Bloomington carried out, the success- 
ful result being just as Mr. Lincoln predicted to the editors at Decatur. 

When Mr. Lincoln was presented by the toastmaster at the editors' banquet 
he began with an apology for his presence at a meeting of editors, speaking of 
himself as an interloper, and then he said he was reminded of an incident. He 
did not say that he was giving a personal experience of his own, but the editors 
surmised as much and were greatly amused. Mr. Lincoln said the man of whom 
he was speaking possessed features the ladies could not call handsome. This man, 
while riding through the woods, met a lady on horseback. He turned out of the 
path and waited for the lady to pass. The lady stopped and looked at the man 
a few moments and said: 

"Well, for land sake, you are the homeliest man I ever saw." 
"Yes, madam," the man replied; "but I can't help it." 
"No, I suppose not," the lady said; "but you might stay at home." 
Mr. Lincoln, when the editors stopped laughing, said that he felt on this 
occasion — a banquet to editors — with propriety he might have stayed at home. 



The Bloomington Convention 33 

The banquet address of Air. Lincoln to the editors at Decatur was not the 
most important act of his in connection with the gathering. His influence and his 
suggestion carried the conference past a crisis of farreaching consequence. In 
the conclusions at Decatur none contributed more to the success of the new party 
movement than the declaration against Knownothingism. The German immigra- 
tion into Illinois had been large. A conspicuous figure in the Decatur conference 
was George Schneider, editor of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung. He was put upon 
the committee on resolutions. Mr. Schneider considered it vital to have embodied 
in the resolutions a condemnation of the native American spirit. What occurred 
is given in his own words: 

"The revolution of 1848 and 1849 in Germany sent thousands of the best men 
of Germany — men of culture and strong will power — to this country, who were 
placed at the heads of many of the best newspapers printed in the German 
language. All of these papers opposed the extension of slavery in the new 
territories. Illinois was in advance of all of them, and nearly every paper 
published in the German language in the state opposed the Nebraska bill. But 
here appeared most suddenly a black cloud on the political horizon which seemed 
to assume such proportions and threatening form as to not only dampen the fire 
of the new movement against slavery, but to drive the Germans from the ranks 
of the party to be formed. I entered the Decatur conference with a resolution 
in opposition to this movement, and I had resolved to fight with all my might 
and win or go down, and with me, perhaps, the new party. My friend, Paul 
Selby, placed me on the committee on resolutions, and I helped to form a plat- 
form containing a paragraph against the prescriptive doctrine of the so-called 
American party. This portion of the platform raised a storm of opposition, and, 
in utter despair, I proposed submitting it to Mr. Lincoln and to abide by his 
decision. Mr. Lincoln, after carefully reading the paragraph, made the following 
comment: 

'"Gentlemen, the resolution introduced by Mr. Schneider is nothing new. It 
is already contained in the Declaration of Independence, and you can not form a 
new party on prescriptive principles.' 

"This declaration of Mr. Lincoln's saved the resolution, and, in fact, helped 
to establish the new party on the most liberal democratic basis. It was adopted 
at the Bloomington convention and next at the great, and the first, national 
Republican convention at Philadelphia on the 18th of June, 1856." 

According to Mr. Schneider, the Illinois delegation performed an important 
part at Philadelphia in securing the proper committee on resolutions, and in 
obtaining the declaration which Mr. Lincoln saved at the Decatur conference. 

"The great majority of the Germans in all the states of the North, and even in 
some portions of the South, entered the new party. The new light which appeared 
at Decatur and Bloomington spread its rays over the whole of the United States, 
and so the regeneration of the Union and the downfall of slavery dated from 
Bloomington." 

Mr. Schneider, from his personal knowledge of the circumstances just given, 
and from his observation as a newspaper editor, always held that Lincoln had 
more to do with the creation and establishment of the Republican party on lines 
which insured its success than historians have credited to him. 

Of Lincoln's activity in the organization of the new party movement before 
the convention of 1856 at Bloomington, J. O. Cunningham of Urbana was a 
witness. Mr. Cunningham accompanied Mr. Lincoln to Bloomington. Mr. Lin- 



34 A Reporter's Lincoln 

coin had been engaged at the courts in Vermilion and Champaign counties before 
the convention. The way to reach Bloomington in those days was to take what 
is now the Wabash to Decatur and thence go by way of the Illinois Central to 
Bloomington. This was Mr. Cunningham's recollection of the journey: 

"A number of delegates and others from the eastern counties, mostly young 
men, happened on the train with Mr. Lincoln, and arrived at Decatur about the 
middle of the afternoon. No train going to Bloomington until the next morning 
made it necessary that we spend the afternoon and night at Decatur. The after- 
noon was spent by Mr. Lincoln in sauntering about the town and talking of his 
early experiences there twenty-five years before. After awhile he proposed going 
to the woods, then a little way south or southwest of the village, in the Sangamon 
bottoms. His proposition was assented to, and all went to the timber. A con- 
venient log by the side of the road, in a patch of brush, afforded seats for the 
company, where the time was spent listening to the playful and familiar talks 
of Mr. Lincoln. We spent the night at the Cassell House, and early the next 
day a train took us to Bloomington. Mr. Lincoln was very solicitous to meet 
some of his old Whig friends from Southern Illinois, whom he hoped to enlist 
in the new political movement, and searched the train to find such. He was 
gratified in finding some one from the south, and it is believed that Jesse K. 
Dubois, afterward nominated at Bloomington as auditor of public accounts, was 
the man." 

Mr. Cunningham described the conditions in Bloomington when Mr. Lincoln 
and the delegates from the eastern counties arrived there in the morning: 

"Many were awaiting the opening of the convention, largely from the 
northern counties. There existed a most intense feeling upon the situation in 
Kansas. Lawrence had been sacked but recently by the rufifianly pro-slavery men, 
and the greatest outrages perpetrated upon free-state settlers. The evening pre- 
vious to the convention Gov. Reeder arrived in town, having been driven a 
fugitive from the territory he had been commissioned to govern, and spoke to 
a large crowd of listeners in the street from an upper piazza. He was moderate 
and not denunciatory in his address, only delineating the violence he had 
witnessed and suffered. Dispatches were received and often publicly read to the 
crowd at the hotels and on the streets, and excitement over the situation was 
intense. No convention in Illinois ever assembled under circumstances of greater 
excitement." 

The success of Mr. Lincoln's policy in the planning of the new party move- 
ment was seen when the convention assembled at Bloomington and it developed 
that the majority of the delegates present had voted four years previously for 
the Democratic nominee for president, Franklin Pierce. When the state ticket, 
which the convention nominated with a rush, was analyzed, it was found that 
the majority of the nominees had voted with the Democratic party four years 
previously. One of the nominees on the electoral ticket put forth at Bloomington, 
Mr. Ferry, had been on the Democratic electoral ticket in 1852. Mr. Lincoln 
steadfastly refused to permit his name to be used for the head of the state ticket. 
When his nomination was suggested he met it with this opinion: "I wish to say 
why I should not be a candidate. If I should be chosen the Democrats would 
say, 'It was nothing more than an attempt to resurrect the dead body of the old 
Whig party.' I would secure the vote of that party and no more, and our defeat 
would follow as a matter of course. But I can suggest a name that will secure 
not only the old Whig vote, but enough anti-Nebraska Democrats to give us the 



The Bloomington Convention 35 

victory. That name is Col. William H. Bissell." This suggestion was made to 
the editors at Decatur on the 22d of February. The editors went home and 
advocated the nomination of Bissell with such force that when the Bloomington 
convention met no other name was considered, and Bissell was nominated with a 
great demonstration. In fact, one enthusiastic delegate shouted that Bissell had 
already been nominated by the people of Illinois and the convention should only 
reaffirm. 

The declaration which Mr. Lincoln's advice secured at Decatur, which was 
adopted at Bloomington and also in the Philadelphia convention with such 
tremendous influence upon the Germans was this: 

"That the spirit of our institution, as well as the constitution of our country, 
guarantees the liberty of conscience as well as political freedom and that we will 
proscribe no one, by legislation or otherwise, on account of religious opinions, 
or in consequence of place of birth." 

The call for the anti-Nebraska convention at Bloomington provided for 226 
delegates. Some counties sent more than their apportionment, owing to the inter- 
est the people felt in the new party movement. Thirty counties, mostly in 
"Egypt," were wholly unrepresented. The roll call contained 270 names. Bloom- 
ington was filled with excited people. The proceedings were regular, but there 
were no contests and no ballots. The business was transacted as rapidly as a 
mass meeting of one mind might have disposed of it. The programme had been 
arranged, and the master spirit in the arrangement was Abraham Lincoln. But 
Mr. Lincoln did not make himself conspicuous. He was on the committee which 
selected the ticket. He had already fixed the platform, practically, at a small 
conference held in Springfield between the Decatur editorial conference and the 
Bloomington convention. He followed the other speakers in a statement of the 
opportunity and of the demand for this new party movement. That statement or 
address was the keynote of the Republican campaign in Illinois that year. It 
was the historic "Lost Speech" — lost because no report was made of it. Two 
short sessions in one day comprised the whole of the convention of a party 
which was not at the time formally named. Yet that party in November following 
had grown to such proportions that it elected its entire state ticket with pluralities 
of from 3000 to 20,000. It polled 96,000 votes for the presidential electors, within 
9000 of a plurality. Since that election in 1856 Illinois has had but two governors 
who were not Republicans. Before that election Illinois had been in the hands 
of the Democrats thirty years. Abraham Lincoln builded the new party well. 
In the Bloomington convention were Democrats, Whigs and Abolitionists. The 
idea which Mr. Lincoln had made dominant in the editors' platform at Decatur 
was opposition to extension of slavery into the new territories. Upon that plat- 
form all of these elements could and did stand. A lifelong Democrat, John M. 
Palmer, was elected president of the convention. A Democrat and a hero of the 
Mexican war. Col. Bissell, was put at the head of the state ticket. Mr. Lincoln 
planned and perfected this union of widely diverse elements as no other man could 
have done. His "Lost Speech" welded together these elements. 



The speaker who preceded Mr. Lincoln was John S. Emory, the Kansas 
editor. He was from Lawrence, the scene of the latest troubles. Years after- 
wards he wrote a graphic narrative of what he saw and heard in Bloomington 
that day. This account is preserved in the papers of the Historical Society of 
Bloomington. It reads: 



36 A Reporter's Lincoln 

"I got oflf the cars May 28 at Bloomington. I learned that the Missouri river 
was shut up to free-state men and that there was to be next day a big gathering 
of the friends of freedom from all parts of Illinois. I here met Gov. Reeder, who 
had got out of the territory in the disguise of an Irish hodcarrier. My own 
home city had been sacked and our newspaper office demolished, and the types 
and printing presses thrown into the raging Kaw. The morrow came in that 
Illinois town, May 29, 1856. It was full of excited men. The very air was sur- 
charged with disturbing forces; men of all parties met face to face on the streets, 
in the overflowing hotels and about the depot platforms of the incoming trains. 
Anti-Nebraska Democrats, Free Soil Whigs and Abolitionists were all there. 
The large hall — Major's — was crowded almost to suffocation as I took my seat 
on one of the rear benches. Browning was called for, and he enjoined upon us 
to 'ever remember that slavery itself was one of the compromises of the constitu- 
tion and was sacredly protected by the supreme law.' After this — rather a cold 
dose to be administered just at that time — Owen Lovejoy appeared and carried 
the convention by a storm of eloquent, invective and terrific oratory. The com- 
mittee on resolutions was named. While this was being done I felt a touch on 
my shoulder, when a young man said he was going to call me out to talk while 
the committee was out, adding that I must stop when I saw the committee come 
in, as it had been arranged to have 'a fellow up here from Springfield, Abe Lin- 
coln, make a speech. He is the best stump speaker in Sangamon County.' This 
young man was Joseph Medill, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, as I after- 
wards learned. 

"I had no thought of anything of this kind, but of course I was prepared to 
tell the story of bleeding Kansas there in the house of her friends. But two 
things bothered me all of the time I was speaking. One was, I was trying to 
pick out Mr. Lincoln, who was to follow me, for he was 'the best stump speaker 
in Sangamon County,' as I had been told, and I had never heard his name before. 
Added to this was the watching I kept up at the hall door of the committee room 
to be sure to have a fitting end to my rather discursive talk on that now notable 
occasion, when the party standing for free Kansas was born in Illinois and when 
a great man appeared as the champion of the Kansas cause. As I stepped aside 
Mr. Lincoln was called for from all sides. I then for the first time, and the last, 
fixed my eyes on the great president. I thought he was not dressed very neatly 
and that his gait in walking up to the platform was sort of swinging. His hair 
was rather rough and the stoop of his shoulders was noticeable. But what took 
me most was his intense serious look. He at once held his big audience and 
handled it like the master he was before the people, pleading in a great and just 
cause. To-day that 'Lost Speech' looks quite conservative. His chief contention 
all through it was that Kansas must come in free, not slave. He said he did not 
want to meddle with slavery where it existed and that he was in favor of a 
reasonable fugitive slave law. I do not now recall how long he spoke. None of 
us did, I judge. He was at his best, and the mad insolence of the slave power as 
at that time exhibited before the country furnished plenty of material for his 
unsparing logic to effectually deal with before a popular audience. Men that day 
were hardly able to take the true gauge of Mr. Lincoln. He had not yet been 
recognized as a great man, and so we were not a little puzzled to know where 
his power came from. He was not eloquent like Phillips, nor could he electrify 
an audience like Lovejoy, but he could beat them both in the deep and lasting 
convictions he left on the minds of all who chanced, as I did, to listen to him 
in those dark days." 



The Bloomington Convention 37 

The impression the "Lost Speech" made upon J. O. Cunningham, who had 
accompanied Air. Lincoln to Bloomington from Urbana, was expressed by him 
in these words: 

"During the absence of the committees many speeches were made. Lovejoy 
(and, by the way, Lovejoy was the greatest stump speaker I ever listened to), 
Browning, Cook, Williams, Arnold and among them one Emory, a free state 
refugee from Kansas, all made speeches. Owing to the inflamed condition of 
public sentiment, the audience had become much wrought up in feeling when it 
came the turn of Mr. Lincoln to make his speech, the so-called 'Lost Speech.' I 
thought it then a great speech, and I now think it a great speech, one of the 
greatest and certainly one of the wisest ever delivered by him. Instead of adding, 
as he might have done, and as most speakers would have done, to the bitterness 
and exasperation his audience felt, as a manner of gaining control of the audience, 
he mildly and kindly reproved the appeal to warlike measure invoked by some 
who had spoken before him, and before entering upon the delivery of his great 
arraignment of the slavery question and of the opposing party, he said: 'I'll tell 
you what we will do; we'll wait until November, and then shoot paper ballots 
at them.' This expression, with his conciliatory and wise declarations, greatly 
quieted the convention and prepared the members for the well-considered plat- 
form which was afterward presented and adopted." 



Gen. Thomas J. Henderson, close friend of Owen Lovejoy, long a member 
of Congress from Lovejoy's district, said of the culminating scene of the 
convention: 

"The great speech of the convention was the speech of Abraham Lincoln. 
His speech was of such wonderful eloquence and power that it fairly electrified 
the members of the convention and everybody who heard it| It was a great 
speech in what he said, in the burning eloquence of his words and in the manner 
in which he delivered it. If ever a speech was inspired in this world, it has always 
seemed to me that that speech of Mr. Lincoln's was. It aroused the convention 
and all who heard it and sympathized with the speaker to the highest pitch of 
enthusiasm. I have never heard any other speech that had such great power 
and influence over those to whom it was addressed. I have always believed it 
to have been the greatest speech Mr. Lincoln ever made and the greatest speech 
to which I ever listened. I can never forget that speech, and especially that 
part of it where, after repelling with great power and earnestness the charge of 
disunion made against the anti-Nebraska party, he stood as if on tiptoe, his tall 
form erect, his long arms extended, his face fairly radiant with the flush of 
excitement, and, as if addressing those preferring the charge of disunionism, he 
slowly, but earnestly and impressively, said: 

" 'We do not intend to dissolve the Union, nor do we intend to let you 
dissolve it.' 

" As he uttered these memorable and, I may say, prophetic words, the mem- 
bers of the convention and everybody present rose as one man to their feet and 
there was a universal burst of applause, repeated over and over again, so that 
it was some moments before Mr. Lincoln could proceed with his speech." 



While the Bloomington convention refrained from the use of the name of the 
Republican party, it left no doubt as to the purposes of the party organization 



38 A Reporter's Lincoln 

then formed. It did more than select a full delegation to the National Repub- 
lican Convention, which was to meet in Philadelphia the following month. The 
Ohio Republican Convention was in session that 29th day of May, at Columbus. 
Judge Owen T. Reeves, a resident of Bloomington, was then a young lawyer 
recently from Ohio. With Jesse W. Fell, Mr. Lincoln's zealous friend in Bloom- 
ington, Mr. Reeves prepared a telegram of greeting from the Bloomington con- 
vention to the Ohio Republican Convention, and John M. Palmer, the president 
of the Bloomington convention, signed it. This greeting breathed the spirit of 
Lincoln to combine all of the elements opposed to extension of slavery in the new 
party. It read: 

"The delegates of the free men of Illinois in convention assembled send 
greetings to the free men of Ohio. William H. Bissell is nominated for governor 
with the enthusiastic acclaim of the most enthusiastic delegate convention ever 
assembled in Illinois. Gov. Reeder and Mrs. Robinson are here. They have 
appeared before the public and have been greeted by the wildest applause. The 
excitement consequent upon the latest outrages at Lawrence, Kan., is sweeping 
like wildfire over the land." 

The Ohio convention responded, addressing the telegram to "the Republican 
Convention of Illinois," and the telegram was read to the convention in Major's 
Hall, "amid great applause." Mrs. Robinson was the wife of the first governor, 
by election, of Kansas, "a most beautiful and interesting lady." She came to 
Bloomington on the train with the delegation from Springfield, having fled from 
Kansas to Illinois for protection. Her husband had been elected under the Free 
Soil constitution. He had been indicted on a charge of treason and had been 
imprisoned. Andrew W. Reeder was the first territorial governor. He had been 
elected to Congress by the Free Soil party, had been indicted with Gov. Robin- 
son, but had escaped in disguise. 



A committee of the Historical Society of Bloomington, headed by George 
Perrin Davis, son of Mr. Lincoln's long-time intimate friend Judge David Davis, 
made every effort that could be suggested to find the "Lost Speech." John G. 
Nicolay, who was Lincoln's secretary and who, in collaboration with John Hay, 
wrote and compiled the standard history of Abraham Lincoln, was a delegate to 
the Bloomington convention. At that time he was editor and proprietor of the 
Pike County Free Press, published at Pittsfield. He signed the call for the 
editors' conference at Decatur, his paper being one of the first to indorse the 
suggestion of Paul Selby's Morgan Journal of Jacksonville that such a conference 
should be held. Mr. Nicolay heard the "Lost Speech," but he took no notes of 
it . He wrote to the Bloomington committee that the address "held the audience 
in such rapt attention that the reporters dropped their pencils and forgot their 
work." Lincoln not only did not write out that speech, but he had no memor- 
anda. So much the committee discovered. The conclusion of the committee 
was that "the speech is still lost." 



Lawyer, Philosopher, Statesman 

"There was this true of all of his law practice," said Judge Owen T. Reeves of 
Bloomington, who saw much of Mr. Lincoln in the courts for fifteen years pre- 
ceding the election to the presidency. "He impressed court and jurymen with 
his absolute sincerity. Mr. Lincoln assisted the state's attorney in prosecuting 
a fellow who had killed somebody. Leonard Swett defended the man, and 
acquitted him on the ground of insanity. It was reported afterward that Mr. Lin- 
coln said that was the last time he would ever assist in the prosecution of a man 
charged with murder. That was about 1857. If Mr. Lincoln was employed in a 
case where the other side had little or nothing to it he would ridicule it out of 
court. I remember a man named Phil Miller brought a law suit to recover dam- 
ages from a man named Jones in a neighborhood above here. The claim for 
damages was based on an alleged assault. Phil went on the stand and described 
the assault as having been a kind of running fight over a ten-acre field. Mr. 
Lincoln pressed the plaintiff on the cross-examination, bringing out fully all of 
the details of the affair, which had not resulted in serious injury. When the time 
came to argue the case to the jury Mr. Lincoln dwelt on the evidence and said: 
'I submit to you that for a fight which spread all over a ten-acre field this is about 
the smallest crop of a ten-acre fight you gentlemen ever saw.' " 



"When Mr. Lincoln was busy preparing a plea or writing an instruction, noth- 
ing going on around him interested him or attracted his notice," Judge Reeves 
said. 

This complete mental abstraction is described by others who knew Mr. 
Lincoln. J. H. Burnham of Bloomington, when he was editor of the Pantagraph, 
had a personal experience. He sat in the courtroom one day waiting for Mr. 
Lincoln to make a speech. 

"Whenever I looked toward him," said Mr. Burnham, "he was apparently 
gazing abstractedly into my own eyes. Again and again I felt his eyes upon me 
with an expression as if I reminded him of some one whom he had once known. Yet 
I really believed his mental abstraction was so great that he actually had no idea 
of my presence." 

The reverse of this complete abstraction of mind was true of Mr. Lincoln. 
When Mr. Lincoln observed or directed his mind toward anybody or anything he 
received and retained impressions which were amazingly definite and lasting. 

"Mr. Lincoln," Judge Reeves said, "had a faculty of asking questions of 
persons who had knowledge of any particular subject which would draw out all of 
the knowledge they possessed. He would sit in the hotel when not engaged in 
court and carry on conversations with various persons. He would describe the 
pioneer days and the pioneer practice with great detail. But I never knew him to 
tell a story unless it was in illustration of something else which had come up in 
the conversation. I never heard him tell a story which wasn't apposite and 
illustrative." 

"The simplicity of Mr. Lincoln," Judge Reeves said, "was well illustrated by 
an incident which occurred, while he was addressing a jury in the old courthouse 
here. Mr. Lincoln had a way of getting close to the jurors and gesticulating with 



40 A Reporter's Lincoln 

his long arms over their heads. On this occasion a button fastening his suspen- 
ders to the trousers gave w^ay while Mr. Lincoln was in the midst of the argu- 
ment. Mr. Lincoln stopped, looked down to see what had happened, and then said 
to the jury, 'Excuse me, gentlemen, for a moment while I fix my tackling.' He 
walked over to the woodbox by the stove — we burned wood in those days — picked 
up a splinter, took out his pocket knife and sharpened the splinter to a good point. 
He thrust the wooden pin through the cloth and fastened the suspenders over 
the ends. Returning to the jury, he said, 'Now, gentlemen, I am ready to go on.' " 

An incident illustrative of Mr. Lincoln's philosophic observation. Judge 
Reeves told in these words: "I remember one morning coming up town rather 
earlier than usual, and meeting Mr. Lincoln in front of the courthouse. Mr. 
Lincoln had his hands behind him, as usual. I greeted him and asked him if he 
had been taking a walk. 

" 'Yes, he said, 'and I came past Gridley's new house and looked it over.' 

"Gen. Asahel Gridley was just finishing a handsome residence, much superior 
to other homes here. I remarked that Gen. Gridley was going to have a fine 
house. 

" 'Yes, it is a fine house,' Mr. Lincoln said, 'but I was thinking it isn't the 
best thing for a man in a town like Bloomington to build a house so much 
better than his neighbors.' " 

"I think it was the most impressive speech I ever heard Lincoln make," 
Judge Reeves said, as he leaned back in his chair, recalling to memory Lincoln 
and the "Lost Speech." Judge Reeves was a young lawyer, recently from Ohio 
when the convention, which formed the Republican party of Illinois, filled Major's 
Hall to the doors in May, 1856. He helped Jesse W. Fell prepare the greeting to 
the Republican Convention of Ohio, which was meeting that day in Columbus to 
organize the new party in that state. 

"Mr. Lincoln was wonderfully stirred," Judge Reeves continued. "Usually he 
was very calm and deliberate in his manner. That so-called 'Lost Speech' seemed 
to show that he had outlined in his mind the whole movement for a new party. 
He started out with a historical sketch of the legislation on the subject of slavery, 
beginning away back. He referred to the ordinance of 1787 when all of this 
northwest territory was dedicated to freedom. Then he took up the Missouri 
compromise. Step by step he came down to the conditions then existing. My 
recollection is that the speech lasted about an hour. Lincoln's speech, as I 
remember, was the last one made. There were Whigs, Democrats and Aboli- 
tionists in the convention, which was the result of a conference of editors of anti- 
Nebraska bill papers held in Decatur the 22d of February, Washington's birth- 
day. Paul Selby of Jacksonville was the leading spirit of that editorial conference. 
The Nebraska bill was, in effect, the repeal of the Missouri compromise of 1820, 
fixing the bounds of slavery. General concessions were made to secure harmony 
in the Major's Hall convention. The main idea was opposition to extension of 
slavery into the new territories. There were nearly 300 delegates in the conven- 
tion. They appointed a state delegation to represent Illinois in the Philadelphia 
Convention, which nominated Fremont and Dayton." 



"I first met Mr. Lincoln in March, 1855," Judge Reeves continued. 'The 
impression Mr. Lincoln made upon me then was that he was a man out of the 
ordinary among men of distinction. I said to Judge David Davis, who took very 



Lawyer, Philosopher, Statesman 41 

kindly to young lawyers and was inclined to assist them, — I said to him the 
impression I had formed of Mr. Lincoln was that he was an extraordinary man. 

"*H-m! h-m! That is a very correct impression you have obtained,' was the 
answer Judge Davis gave me to my comment. I think that Judge Davis under- 
stood Mr. Lincoln better than a great many did. I don't believe any man ever 
lived who had more perfect knowledge of human nature than had Mr. Lincoln. 
Mr. Lincoln knew the feelings, the prejudices, the motives of common humanity. 
He was a master of all that. No man had more sympathy for the common people 
than Mr. Lincoln had." 

The judgment of his Bloomington friends Mr. Lincoln consulted, but he was 
not always guided by the advice he sought upon political matters. Judge Reeves 
recalled the circumstances of a visit and a consultation Mr. Lincoln had at 
Bloomington in 1858. 

"The first joint debate was at Ottawa," he said. "There Senator Douglas 
propounded certain questions to Mr. Lincoln to answer at the next debate at 
Freeport. Mr. Lincoln came to Bloomington to see Judge Davis. Norman B. 
Judd came down from Chicago for the conference. There was a consultation on 
these questions oflfered by Senator Douglas. The answers to the questions were 
submitted by Mr. Lincoln and considered. Then Mr. Lincoln said, 'I'm going to 
propound certain questions to Douglas.' He told them the questions he intended 
to ask. They remonstrated and said that Douglas would answer Lincoln's ques- 
tions in a certain manner and that the result would be the defeat of Lincoln for 
the Senate. Mr. Lincoln insisted that he would ask the questions, and said: 'If 
he answers as you say he will and it defeats me for the Senate, it will forever 
defeat him for the presidency.' And that was the result. Mr. Lincoln foresaw 
that if Douglas made the answers which Judge Davis, Mr. Judd and the others 
predicted Douglas would make, those answers would forever debar Douglas from 
getting the support of the Southern Democrats." 



Wells H. Blodgett's Experience 

Of Lincoln's friendliness toward younger men, there are many recollections. 
Wells H. Blodgett of St. Louis, had his experience. He was reading law about 
1859 in Mr. Judd's Chicago office where Mr. Lincoln visited whenever he came to 
the city. An acquaintance sprang up between them. Mr. Lincoln called the 
young student by his middle name "Howard" and gave him advice. Shortly 
before the nomination in 1860, Mr. Lincoln was in the office. As he passed out the 
door one of the law partners called after him: 

"Are you coming up to the convention, Lincoln?" 

Mr. Lincoln closed the door as if he had not heard or did not intend to 
answer. But he opened it again and, looking in, said: 

"Well, I don't know. I am not quite enough of a candidate to stay away 
and too much of a candidate to come." 

After the nomination Mr. Lincoln attended a public reception in Chicago. 
Among those who shook hands with the nominee, was Henry W. Blodgett, 
afterwards the judge. 

"Where is Howard?" Mr. Lincoln asked. 

The brother replied that he was at the office. 

"Tell him to come over," said AJr. Lincoln. 

Wells H. Blodgett went to the hotel. There stood Mr. Lincoln, a striking 
figure in his first swallow tail suit and with kid gloves, once white but now 



42 A Reporter's Lincoln 

grimy from much hand shaking. Mr. Blodgett fell in line, when he had nearly 
reached Mr. Lincoln, the latter held up his hands and said with mock seriousness: 

"Howard, look at this. Never go into politics." 

Mr. Blodgett said that Lincoln never in his life wore a starched collar; that 
pictures depicting him wearing such a collar were untrue. Lincoln always wore a 
shirt with a loose collar, which turned outward from his neck, plainly showing a 
prominent Adam's apple. 

The Rock Island Bridge, said Col. Blodgett, was the first built across the 
Mississippi river. Owners of river boats sued to have the draw bridge removed, 
as obstructing river navigation. Their contention was that a boat needed a space 
150 feet wide in order to pass up and down the river. Lincoln, who was on the 
side of the owners of the bridge, argued that the interests of the people wishing 
to cross the river were equal to those of people going up or down the stream. He 
said Lincoln argued that at intersecting streets it was necessary for people going 
one way to wait until people going at right angles had passed, turn and turn 
about. Arguing along this line, Lincoln contended that boats and people cross- 
ing the river should take turns while the draw bridge closed and opened. He 
said the bridge offered ample space for boats to go up and down and that the 
river people were straining a point when they wanted space enough to turn 
about right at the bridge. Lincoln and his associate lawyers won the case and 
there is to-day a bridge across the river at Rock Island. 



A Land Case 

Lincoln's popular fame as a lawyer rested largely upon his convincing power 
before juries. But Lincoln was more than a jury lawyer. He could untangle 
the knotty land cases in a way to make those who listened wonder why they had 
thought them difficult. J. H. Cheney of Bloomington went down to Springfield 
in August, 1853, to consult Lincoln about the title to a piece of land. 

"I took with me," he said, "a letter of introduction from Gen. Asahel Gridley 
of this place. Upon entering his office I found Lincoln in and presented my letter 
from Gen. Gridley. I stated my case. Lincoln gave close attention, asking a 
few questions as I proceeded. When I had finished he talked about the case, 
making every point clear, so clear, indeed, that I wondered why I had come. It 
seemed as if every one should have understood the case. Lincoln concluded by 
saying that I had a good title to the land, and then asked, 'What did old Grid, 
say about it?' I told him Gen. Gridley had said he thought my title a good one, 
but advised me to see him. Lincoln's comment was, 'Grid, is a good lawyer, 
and he knows.' I then asked him how much he charged for the advice. He said, 
'I reckon if it is worth anything, it is worth $10,' which I paid." 

Mr. Cheney had an experience with Mr. Lincoln later in which Mr. Lincoln 
was the seeker after information, and Mr. Cheney was the giver. 

"It was in the spring of 1859," said Mr. Cheney, "when Mr. Lincoln was 
in Bloomington attending court. Mr. Lincoln was stopping at the Pike House. 
He was in the office reading what I took to be a comic almanac. He seemed to 
be very much amused and would frequently chuckle to himself. A gentleman and 
I were discussing difference in weights of cattle before and after being fed and 
watered. Mr. Lincoln addressed us and said: 'Gentlemen, I have been interested 
in your conversation. As a matter of information, I would like to know what 
the shrinkage would be." 



The "Lost Speech" 



Upon Judge Reuben M. Benjamin the "Lost Speech" of Mr. Lincoln made a 
peculiar impression. 

"It so happened," said Judge Benjamin, sitting at a table in the law library 
of Bloomington, "that I was in Washington when the anti-Nebraska bill passed 
the Senate on May, 1854. I had been principal of Hopkins Academy at Old 
Hadley in Massachusetts the winter before, and had gone down to Washington 
on a week's vacation. I went up to the capitol at 12 o'clock, midday, and I 
didn't leave until the bill passed at 1 o'clock in the morning. I heard Douglas, 
Lewis Cass, who was the only one to read what he had to say; Sumner, Gwinn, 
Butler of South Carolina, Mason, Seward, Chase and Benjamin of Louisiana, 
speak upon the measure. One thing impressed me so vividly that I can now see 
Sumner turning toward James Murray Mason and pointing to him, as he quoted 
what George Mason, his grandfather, had said about slavery when he refused to 
sign the constitution because it contained the clause deferring the abolition of the 
slave trade. I came to Bloomington in April, 1856, and entered the law office of 
Asahel Gridley and John H. Wickhizer. On the wall of the office I read in Mr. 
Wickhizer's handwriting: "The repeal of the Missouri compromise will lead to 
civil war." With the recollection of that debate in the Senate I listened to Mr. 
Lincoln as he made his speech in Major's Hall on May 29, 1856. The "Lost 
Speech" was not rhetorical, but it was logical. Every now and then Mr. Lincoln 
threw in some statement like a blow from a sledgehammer. Familiar as I felt 
that I was with the subject of extension of slavery in the territories, from having 
heard the leaders of both parties discuss it exhaustively at that session in the 
Senate, I was deeply moved by the manner in which Mr. Lincoln handled the 
subject." 

"That Major's Hall convention," continued Judge Benjamin, "was made up 
of elements which differed widely, but which were agreed upon opposition to 
extension of slavery in the territories. And that was the issue to which Mr. 
Lincoln addressed himself as the one great question before the country. There 
were Democtrats, like Palmer, who presided over the convention; Abolitionists, 
like Owen Lovejoy and John Wentworth, and Whigs, like David Davis and O. H. 
Browning. The main thing in the resolutions, as in Mr. Lincoln's speech, was 
opposition to extension of slavery into the territories. The 'Lost Speech' of Mr. 
Lincoln at the Bloomington convention was very like what is known as the 
Peoria speech, delivered in 1854." 

A few months after that Bloomington convention. Judge Benjamin had his 
first personal relationship with Mr. Lincoln. Judge Benjamin, after a study of the 
Illinois practice, felt prepared for admission to the bar. He made application. 
Mr. Lincoln was appointed by the court to examine him. He made some inquiries 
and wrote out the certificate. The part of the examination which left the strong- 
est impression on the applicant's mind was that Mr. Lincoln omitted what was 
quite customary in those days with examining committees — extension of courtesy 
by the candidate at another kind of bar. There was no treating when Judge 
Benjamin was passed by Abraham Lincoln. 



44 A Reporter's Lincoln 

When He Was Just **Bob's Father" 

"The only time I ever saw Abraham Lincoln was when I was a student at 
Exeter, N. H.," said Professor Marshall S. Snow when he was dean of Washing- 
ton University. "His son, Robert, was at Phillips-Exeter Academy, in the class 
above me. Mr. Lincoln had been in New York the last of February, 1860, to 
make his famous Cooper Union speech against slavery. He came up to Exeter 
to see 'Bob' for a day. I think, perhaps, he came to stay over Sunday. The 
national campaign was opening, but the presidential nominations had not been 
made. We had heard of Lincoln, had read his speeches, but I don't think any 
of us regarded him as likely to be the Republican nominee for president. We 
were for Seward, the New York candidate. As soon as it was known Mr. Lin- 
coln was coming to Exeter, the Republican committee arranged for a meeting 
at the Town Hall, which would hold about 800 people. There were about ninety 
of us boys in the academy at that time. 'Bob' was a neat-looking boy, a favorite 
in the school and popular with the girls of Exeter. We turned out in full force 
for the meeting to see 'Bob's' father as well as to hear Mr. Lincoln speak. Prof. 
Wentworth presided." 

The dean smiled, as he recalled the scene of forty-nine years before and 
described it. 

"Judge Underwood of Virginia had accompanied Mr. Lincoln to Exeter. 
He was a short man. Mr. Lincoln was very tall. They came on the stage 
together. The contrast was striking. When they sat down Judge Underwood's 
feet did not reach the floor. Mr. Lincoln's legs were so long he had trouble 
in disposing of them and twisted them about under the chair to get them out of 
the way. One of the boys leaned over and whispered: 'Look here! Don't 
you feel kind of sorry for Bob?' We didn't laugh. We were sympathetic for 
'Bob' because his father didn't make a better appearance. The girls whispered 
to each other, 'Isn't it too bad Bob's got such a homely father.' " 

The dean mused a few moments, calling back that impression of his student 
days, and went on: 

"Mr. Lincoln wore no beard at that time. His hair was mussed up. It stood 
in all directions. As he sat there in the chair he looked as if he was ready to 
fall to pieces and didn't care if he did. Judge Underwood spoke first, for about 
twenty minutes. We didn't pay much attention to him. We were looking at 
Mr. Lincoln. I remember I thought at the time he was the most melancholy 
man I had ever seen. When Mr. Lincoln was introduced he got up slowly until 
he stood there as straight as an arrow in that long black coat. He hadn't spoken 
ten minutes until everybody was carried away. We forgot all about his looks. 
Exeter was full of people of culture. It was a place to which people moved 
when they retired from active life. The audience was one of educated, cultivated 
people. I never heard such applause in that hall as Mr. Lincoln received that 
night. He spoke nearly an hour. There was no coarseness, no uncouthness of 
speech or manner. Every part fitted into the whole argument perfectly. As I 
recall it, the Exeter speech followed closely the lines of the Cooper Union 
address, which was on slavery. I suppose it had been carefully prepared. I 
know it captured all of us. When the meeting closed we went up to the plat- 
form and shook hands with Mr. Lincoln, telling him how proud we were to 
have the honor of meeting Bob's father. Mr. Lincoln has always been to me the 
man I saw and heard in that town hall at Exeter." 



They Heard the Final Debate 

Sixteen years and three weeks after he had shocked the dignity and aroused 
the resentment of that community by the farcical meeting with "Jim" Shields, 
Abraham Lincoln came to Alton to meet Stephen A. Douglas in the greatest 
debate duel in American history. A tablet in bronze on the front of the city hall 
records the date, October 15, 1858, and the site of the platform. This city hall 
had been built not long before. It presented the appearance of new brick walls 
then. Now it is smart looking under the latest of several coats of paint. The 
wooden platform built against the wall overlooked a large plaza. Two old residents 
of Alton who attended the meeting brought back vividly the scene of that October 
day. One of them, J. H. Yager, stood well back in the throng, thrilled by the 
words of Lincoln and not missing the comments and the manner of those about 
him. The other, Henry Guest AlcPike, was one of the twenty-five leaders of the 
two parties who sat on the platform. 

Better natural vantage for public speaking it would be difificult to find. To 
the eastward the surface rises like an amphitheater, but with easy slope. South- 
westward the open space extended to the bank of the Mississippi. From his 
seat on the platform, while waiting for Douglas to fill his time, Lincoln could 
look across to the island where he had sat on a log awaiting for seconds and peace- 
makers to determine whether the code required him to match broadswords with 
Shields. Quite possibly the funny duel never occurred to Lincoln, for this was 
the last of the seven joint debates, and, according to the local traditions, Lincoln 
spoke with a great deal of spirit. He drove home his points with more than his 
ordinary energy. He seemed to realize that this was his last chance at Douglas 
and that he was completing the record. 

"We could almost feel the war coming," said Mr. Yager, as he recalled the 
degree in which Lincoln aroused the Republicans that day. The plaza is paved 
with brick now. It is the center from which the seven Altons radiate up the 
valleys and over the hills, occupying a considerable section of Illinois. 

"There was no paving then," described Mr. Yager. "The surface was rougher 
than it is there. Over on that corner was the Presbyterian Church. Lincoln and 
Douglas were escorted from the hotel by committees made up of the principal 
men of the two parties in Alton. Douglas came down that street from the old 
Alton House on the arm of Judge H. W. Billings. R. P. Tansey, who afterwards 
moved to St. Louis and became president of the Merchants' Exchange, was with 
them, and Thomas Dimmock, the editor. Zephaniah B. Joab was another member 
of the Democratic committee that day. Some of those who escorted Lincoln to 
the stand were Gov. Cyrus Edwards, Col. F. S. Rutherford, George T. Brown, 
Henry G. McPike and John M. Pearson of Godfrey." 

Mr. Yager and Mr. McPike agreed that, notwithstanding the immensity of the 
gathering, one of the greatest ever seen in Alton, the speakers could be heard 
distinctly. They recalled the not altogether encouraging figure Lincoln presented 
as he sat on the platform awaiting his turn to speak, and they also remembered 
that Lincoln filled the Republicans with enthusiasm before he had spoken half a 
dozen sentences. "We felt so good we didn't know what to do," said Mr. Yager. 

"A house divided against itself can not stand. I believe this government can 
not endure permanently half slave and half free," was the declaration which Lin- 



46 A Reporter's Lincoln 

coin had made at the beginning of his campaign, and which he had reiterated at 
the several debates. Douglas had, as often, artfully interpreted this declaration 
to mean that Lincoln was for disunion. 

"In other words," Douglas would say when his turn came, "Mr. Lincoln 
asserts as a fundamental principle of this government that there must be uniform- 
ity in the laws and domestic institutions of each and all the States of the Union; 
and he therefore invites all the nonslaveholding States to band together, organ- 
ize as one body and make war upon slavery in Kentucky, upon slavery in Virginia, 
upon the Carolinas, upon slavery in all the slaveholding States in this Union, and 
to persevere in that war until it is exterminated." 

The meeting at Alton was to close the joint debates. Douglas, by the terms 
of the agreement, had the advantage of closing at this final meeting. Standing 
where he looked over the heads of his hearers to valleys and hills of a slave 
State, Lincoln seemed to feel that he must make his position plain beyond all 
misinterpretation. He repeated to his Alton hearers his "A house divided against 
itself cannot stand." He quoted from Douglas the meaning attributed by the 
latter to the declaration, and then, raising his voice above the usual tone, and 
with impassioned manner, Lincoln exclaimed: 

"He knows that is false!" 

Recalling the words and the startling eflfect upon the listeners, Mr. Yager 
said the Republicans raised a mighty shout. The Democrats looked at one 
another in amazement. One of them, an eminently respectable citizen of Alton, 
who stood beside Mr. Yager, burst out with: "That is disgraceful. I won't stay 
here any longer." He made his way out of the crowd. 



Three brothers, John Hitt, Emory Hitt and Robert R. Hitt, made hay one 
summer forenoon of the year 1856, on the farm near Mount Morris. They 
knocked oflf in time to reach Oregon, in Ogle County, for the speaking that 
afternoon. Abraham Lincoln, John Wentworth and Martin P. Sweet addressed 
an audience of 3000 people. 

"Their object was to induce the people to vote for Fremont and Dayton," 
said John Hitt. "The people of Ogle County were convinced that day. I thought 
that Mr. Lincoln was an intellectual giant. From that day I trusted him. I never 
doubted that he was a safe leader." 

Two years after that summer afternoon at Oregon, in Ogle County, Robert 
R. Hitt was the stenographer who traveled with Mr. Lincoln and made the reports 
of the joint debates between Lincoln and Douglas. John Hitt was present at the 
last of the debates which was held at Alton. He recalled an interesting incident 
of that day, which showed Robert R. Hitt to advantage as a diplomat, in which 
capacity he afterward obtained much distinction, before his district placed him in 
Congress for life. 

"I was one of a party that dined with Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln that day," said 
John Hitt, "at the leading hotel in Alton. When the debate was over Judge 
Trumbull led the party to the table. He occupied a seat at the head of the table. 
To his right Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln were seated. Horace White, who accompanied 
Mr. Lincoln as the representative of the State Central Committee; Robert R. 
Hitt, my brother, who was shorthand reporter for the Tribune, and I, were 
seated opposited Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln. Senator Trumbull conversed with Mr. 
Lincoln in an animated manner. In reply to the question of Mr. Lincoln whether 
any impression had been made upon the people, Mr. Trumbull said that public 



They Heard the Final Debate 47 

meetings in Madison County were usually undemonstrative, but he thought a 
favorable impression had been made. Mrs. Lincoln invited Mr. White and my 
brother Robert to go with Mr. Lincoln and herself to Springfield and rest for the 
coming week. My brother Robert thanked Mrs. Lincoln for her courtesy, and said, 
in declining, that he would never call at her house until she lived in the White 
House. She laughed at the suggestion, and said there w-as not much prospect of 
such a residence verj' soon." 



Impressions Made on J. S. Ewing 

James S. Ewing of the Bloomington bar, boy and man, through a decade 
and a half saw much of Abraham Lincoln. His father owned and conducted the 
National Hotel in Bloomington as early as 1844 and 1845. That was the only 
substantial tavern in town, the place where everybody came to talk politics. 
There Mr. Lincoln, John T. Stewart and the other lawyers stopped when they 
came to Bloomington to attend the terms of court twice a year. Judge Samuel 
H. Treat was the circuit judge at that early period. 

"Mr. Lincoln stayed at my father's house," Mr. Ewing said. "I was a boy 
of 9. I knew Mr. Lincoln as a boy of that age might. I was in the habit of 
going to the trials to hear the speeches. It was in the nature of a show. Of 
course I heard Mr. Lincoln try a great many cases. I knew him all through my 
boyhood and to the time I was admitted to the bar. One of the most interesting 
things I recall was a declaration I heard Mr. Lincoln make about temperance. I 
was present in a room in the National Hotel when Senator Stephen A.. Douglas 
was in Bloomington in 1854 for the purpose of making a speech. Mr. Lincoln 
came in to call on Mr. Douglas. There was a bottle of whiskey on the sideboard 
or mantel. Mr. Douglas said, after the greetings: 

" 'Lincoln, won't you have something?' 

" 'No,' said Mr. Lincoln, 'I guess not.' 

"'What,' said Mr. Douglas, 'do you belong to a temperance society?' 

" 'No,' replied Air. Lincoln, 'I don't belong to any temperance society, but I 
am temperate in this that I don't drink anything.' 

"I believe," said Mr. Ewing, "that that was a statement of his exact position 
on the temperance question. He didn't drink anything himself, but he didn't try 
to dictate what any one else should do." 



"Mr. Lincoln was fond of children. He took notice of boys, remembered 
them and spoke to them by name," Mr. Ewing said. "My father was a Democrat. 
He nicknamed one of my brothers 'Democrat' and he went by that name for years. 
Mr. Lincoln was a Whig; one day he commented on the nickname 'Democrat.' 
He said to my other brother, the one next to me, 'I'll call you Whig.' That was 
Judge W. G. Ewing of Chicago. He never has gotten rid of the name Mr. Lin- 
coln bestowed upon him. He has always been called by his friends, 'Whig 
pAving,' instead of William Ewing. I only mention this to show the attention 
Mr. Lincoln paid to boys, even to the extent of knowing their names. Although 
Mr. Lincoln and my father differed in politics, they were great friends." 



48 A Reporter's Lincoln 

How the News Came 

At the close of election day, 1860, Lyman Trumbull and Henry Guest McPike, 
descendant of the old revolutionary hero, took the train at Alton for Springfield. 
The issues were too exciting to rest until morning without knowing the result. 
Trumbull was close to Lincoln. McPike, younger than either Lincoln or Trum- 
bull, had been much in their company. It was late at night when the Alton train 
reached Springfield. Out in front of the old State capitol local orators were 
addressing the people, and from time to time returns were read out. Trumbull 
led the way to the telegraph ofifice. Upstairs in a room were found Mr. Lincoln, 
/esse K. DuBois and Edward Baker. 

"Lincoln was sitting on a kind of sofa," said Mr. McPike, "Du Bois, who 
was a stout man, was seated. Ed Baker was looking over the dispatches as they 
came in and trying to figure out something conclusive from them. After 
greetings all around Trumbull wanted to know how it looked. Mr. Lincoln was 
very quiet, less excited than anybody else in the party. 

" 'We are working now on New York State,' Baker said, in reply to Judge 
Trumbull's question. 'We have just had something from New York City that 
looks very well.' 

" 'Well,' said Judge Trumbull, 'if we get New York that settles it.' 

" 'Yes,' said Baker, 'that will settle it.' 

"We sat there, nobody else saying much, but all listening to Baker as he 
looked over the dispatches and commented on them. I don't know what time it 
was, but it must have been very late, when Ed Baker got a dispatch and began to 
tell what was in it. He was so excited he did not read clearly. 

'"How is that?' shouted old Jesse, sitting up. He had been half asleep for 
some time. 

"Baker began again and read out the announcement that Lincoln had carried 
New York. 

"Du Bois jumped to his feet. 'Hey!' he shouted, and then began singing as 
loud as he could a campaign song. 'Ain't You Glad You Jined the Republicans?' 

"Lincoln got up and Trumbull and the rest of us. We were all excited. There 
were hurried congratulations. Suddenly old Jesse grabbed the dispatch which 
settled it out of Ed Baker's hands and started on a run for the door. We followed, 
Baker after DuBois, I was next, and then came Trumbull, with Lincoln last. The 
staircase was narrow and steep. We went down it, still on the run. DuBois 
rushed across the street toward the meeting so out of breath he couldn't speak 
plain. All he could say was "Spatch! 'spatch!' He was going over with the news 
to the meeting. Ed Baker followed him. Lincoln and Trumbull stopped on the 
sidewalk. 

" 'Well, I guess I'll go over to the speaking,' said Trumbull. 

" 'Well, judge, good night. I guess I'll go down and tell Mary about it,' said 
Lincoln, still perfectly cool, the coolest man in the party. Across the street 10,000 
crazy people were shouting, throwing up their hats, slapping and kicking one 
another. They had just heard the dispatch that old Jesse had grabbed from Ed 
Baker. You never saw such a sight. And down the street walked Lincoln, with- 
out a sign of anything unusual." 



The Lincoln Scrapbooks 

The most popular form which interest in Lincolniana takes is the scrapbook. 
Thousands of people keep Lincoln scrapbooks. They clip and paste the stories 
and reminiscences of Lincoln that appear in the newspapers and magazines. 
Some of them exercise selection. Others take everything they find about Lincoln, 
making book after book. Library shelves are occupied with long rows of Lin- 
coln scrapbooks. Instead of the interest decreasing, there are to-day more of 
these Lincoln scrapbooks being filled than ever before. 

The first Lincoln scrapbook was made by Lincoln himself. It was about four 
inches long and three inches wide — a memorandum book, in which Mr. Lincoln 
pasted clippings from newspapers. He wrote on the first leaf of the book: 

"The following extracts are taken from various speeches of mine, delivered at 
various times and places, and I believe they contain the substance of all I have 
said about 'negro equality.' The first three are from my answer to Judge Doug- 
las October 16, 1854, at Peoria." 

Among his old Whig friends, many of them from Kentucky, who were numer- 
ous in the central part of Illinois, Mr. Lincoln had a good deal of trouble to meet 
the artful argument of the Douglas men that the new Republican party in 1856 
and 1858 meant "negro equality." A prominent man among these Kentucky 
Whigs was Capt. James N. Brown, who called himself a "Lincoln Republican." 
He had been in the Legislature. He was a man of much popularity in Sangamon 
County. Capt. Brown was willing to identify himself with Lincoln's new party, 
but he shied at the proposition to be a standard bearer by taking the Republican 
nomination for the Legislature in 1858, although Lincoln was to be the candidate 
for United States senator. Mr. Lincoln urged; Capt. Brown consented. But 
when the captain got into the campaign he was met everywhere with the inquiry 
how he, a Kentuckian, could stand for a man who said the negro was as good as 
a white man. 

Capt. Brow^n went to Lincoln and said he must have something that would 
plainly define Lincoln's position, so that he could meet the charge that the 
Republicans were black abolitionists. The captain said he understood the situa- 
tion very well, but he couldn't state it satisfactorily; he wanted an answer he 
could read. Mr. Lincoln prepared the little scrapbook. He added to 
the clippings a letter addressed to Capt. Brown. The candidate carried 
the scrapbook through the remainder of the campaign of 1858, reading from 
it to confound the Douglas men. Whenever, either on the stump or on 
the street or in private conversation, Capt. Brown heard the charge of 
"negro equality" made against Mr. Lincoln, he drew forth the book and read 
"Lincoln's own words." 



The second Lincoln scrapbook was made in 1858 by Robert R. Hitt. Mr. 
Hitt not only reported the joint debates; he preserved the current newspaper 
accounts, not excepting the efforts of the Douglas organs to throw discredit by 
ridicule upon Mr. Lincoln. At Freeport Lincoln had the opening speech. 
According to the Chicago Times clipping, the joint debate was introduced in this 
way: 



50 A Reporter's Lincoln 

"Mr. Lincoln. 'Fellow-citizens, ladies and gentlemen — ' 

"Deacon Bross. 'Hold on, Lincoln, you can't speak yet. Hitt ain't here, and 
there is no use of your speaking unless the Press and Tribune have a report.' 

"Mr. Lincoln. 'Ain't Hitt here? Where is he?' 

"A voice. 'Perhaps he is in the crowd.' 

"Deacon Bross, after adjusting the green shawl around his classic shoulders 
after the manner of McVicker in Brutus, advanced to the front of the stand and 
spoke: 'If Hitt is in the crowd he will please to come forward. Is Hitt in the 
crowd? If he is, tell him Mr. Bross, of the Chicago Press and Tribune, wants 
him to come up here on the stand to make a verbatim report for the only paper 
in the Northwest that has enterprise enough to publish speeches in full.' 

"Joe Medill. 'That's the talk.' 

"Herr Kreisman here wiped his spectacles and looked into the crowd to see 
if he could distinguish Hitt. 

"A voice. 'If Hitt isn't here, I know a young man from our town that can 
make nearly a verbatim report, I guess. Shall I call him?' 

"Deacon Bross. 'Is he here?' 

"A voice. 'Yes, I see him; his name is Hitch.' 

"Loud cries for Hitch were made and messengers ran wildly about inquiring 
'Where is Hitch? Where is Hitch?' 

"After a delay the moderators decided that the speaking must go on. 

"Deacon Bross. 'Well, wait (bringing a chair), I'll report the speech, Lin- 
coln, you can now go on, I'll report you.' " 



The idea of Deacon Bross making a verbatim report of Lincoln's speech was 
calculated to inspire hilarity. 

About the time of the Freeport meeting the Chicago Times had a grievance 
against the deacon. At some gathering, so the story went, the deacon had neg- 
lected to see that Matteson of the Times had a chair. For weeks and months 
afterward the Times printed in its reports of various occurrences this single line: 

"And Deacon Bross spoke." 

Sandwiched between paragraphs of Lincoln's speech at Freeport; injected 
into proceedings of the School Board of Chicago, sown broadcast over the local 
page was the inevitable line: 

"And Deacon Bross spoke." 

In its account of the closing of the Freeport meeting the Times said: 

"During the delivery of Douglas' speech Mr. Lincoln was very uneasy; he 
could not sit still nor would his limbs sustain him while standing. He was shiv- 
ering, quaking, trembling, and his agony during the last fifteen minutes of Judge 
Douglas' speech was positively painful to the crowd who witnessed his behavior." 

Then followed more and worse of this kind of abuse until the newspaper went 
beyond the border of decency. Injected into the Times' report of the Freeport 
debate was this: 

"The reporter can not let this opportunity pass without returning his thanks 
to Parson Lovejoy for his very gentlemanly conduct in leaning over him during 
the latter part of Senator Douglas' speech and commanding, in a loud voice, 
Mr. Turner to announce to the people that he would address them after the 
adjournment of the meeting." 

When the debate was over Lovejoy, who had been thoroughly aroused by 



The Lincoln Scraphooks 51 

Douglas' reference to "the nigger" — Douglas said "nigger," not "negro," as 
the Times reported him on that occasion — gathered the crowd in front of the 
Brewster House and made such an impassioned appeal as those who listened to 
it never forgot. Lovejoy was an artist who could paint word pictures, and a 
musician who could touch the human chords. He was a master at showing the 
emotions. He stood before that immense crowd that day and held up slavery in 
its worst possible light. He told the story of the slave girl's flight from her 
pursuers, and his hearers breathed so hard you could hear them, while their 
dilated eyes gleamed with passion. Republicans with the spell on them went 
from the Lovejoy meeting and said to Stenographer Hitt: 

"Print Lovejoy's speech instead of Lincoln's." 

With the help of an ancient scrapbook the late Congressman Robert R. Hitt 
preserved the local color and the contemporaneous proportions of the joint 
debates. Mr. Hitt was, in 1858, a law reporter. He had recently completed his 
education at Asbury University. To obtain verbatim reports of the debates, the 
Chicago Press and Tribune engaged Mr. Hitt. When Mr. Lincoln of Springfield 
challenged Senator Douglas of Illinois to this series of joint debates, there was 
derision among Democrats. The challenge was considered a bluff. Friends of the 
senator professed to believe that Mr. Lincoln was not in earnest. When Mr. 
Douglas accepted the challenge the prediction was common that Mr. Lincoln 
"would find some hole to crawl out." The organ of Senator Douglas was the 
Chicago Times. Its comment, as preserved in the scrapbook was in these words: 

"If the Republican champion does not eflfect a timely retreat there will be 
music at the times and places designated in Senator Douglas' reply to Mr. Lin- 
coln. But will Mr. Lincoln meet our senator? We should like to know. It is 
evident from the tone of the Republican papers that he and his friends have 
determined that he shall not acquiesce in the very fair arrangement proposed. It 
is even evident, we think, to all men cognizant of the facts, that had Mr. Lincoln 
or his friends had any idea that his challenge would be accepted, it never W'ould 
have been sent. They waited until it seemed impossible for Senator Douglas to 
accept their proffer before opening correspondence with him; and now that he 
has signified his willingness to meet Mr. Lincoln in debate before the people at 
one central point in each congressional district, the Republicans and their candi- 
date are fearing and trembling and soon will be begging. Lincoln will not meet 
Douglas; this is what we think will come of the challenge?" 



Immediately after the first debate at Ottawa there broke out a fierce news- 
paper controversy. The issue was the integrity of the stenographic report of 
Lincoln's speech in the Douglas organ. Two papers printed what purported to 
be verbatim reports of the debate. They were the Press and Tribune of Chicago 
and the Chicago Times. But between the two reports, so far as Lincoln was 
concerned, there was very great difference. Mr. Lincoln's Ottawa speech, as it 
appeared in the Chicago Times, was a horrible mess. It abounded in ungrammat- 
ical expressions. Sentences were run together in such a way as to make no sense. 
Punctuation marks were either entirely omitted or misplaced. The friends of 
Mr. Lincoln immediately charged the Democrats with the despicable trick of 
misrepresenting him. They even went so far as to suggest that Douglas himself 
had access to the manuscript of the stenographer, and that he distorted Lincoln's 
speech so as to make his antagonist appear ridiculous. To this charge the 
Democrats replied that Lincoln had been reported exactly as he spoke, and that 



52 A Reporter's Lincoln 

his speech had been printed as delivered. They made the counter charge that 
Lincoln's speech was taken by a self-appointed committee of Republicans and 
fixed up previous to publication. An extract from the ancient scrapbook is 
peculiarly interesting. The Chicago Times, in conducting its side of the con- 
troversy, said: 

"Any person who heard at Ottawa the speech of Abraham, alias Old Abe, 
alias Abe, alias 'Spot' Lincoln, must have been astonished at the report of that 
speech as it appeared in the Press and Tribune of this city. Our version of it 
was literal. No man who heard it delivered could fail to recognize and acknowl- 
edge the fidelity of our reporters. We did not attempt, much, to 'fix up' the 
bungling efTort; that was not our business. Lincoln should have learned before 
this to 'rake after' himself. Or, rather, to supersede the necessity of 'raking after,' 
by taking heed to his own thoughts and experiences. If he ever gets into the 
United States Senate, of which there is no earthly probability, he will have to do 
that. In the congressional arena the words of debaters are snatched from their 
lips, as it were, and immediately enter into and become a part of the literature 
of the country. But it seems, from the difference between the two versions of 
Lincoln's speech, that the Republicans have a candidate for the Senate of whose 
bad rhetoric and horrible jargon they are ashamed, upon which, before they 
would publish it, they called a council of 'literary' men, to discuss, reconstruct 
and rewrite; they dare not allow Lincoln to go in print in his own dress; and 
abuse us, the Times, for reporting him literally." 



This controversy over the Democratic reports of Lincoln's speech was waged 
with great bitterness until long after the seven debates were finished. Republi- 
cans were very sore about it. They held Douglas in a large degree responsible 
for the unjust treatment. There was something in it which created great sympathy 
for Lincoln. The American sense of fair play was outraged. Minor matters 
which appeal to sentiment often go a long way in politics. There is scarcely 
any doubt that this misrepresentation of Lincoln cost Douglas many votes, both 
in the senatorial campaign and in the presidential campaign which followed two 
years later. Republicans did not forgive and forget the apparently shabby treat- 
ment of their candidate until the war came on and Douglas with all his might 
espoused the Union cause and came to the support of President Lincoln. That 
was the atonement. 

Mr. Hitt thought both sides were probably wrong to some extent in this 
controversy. It is doubtful if Douglas personally had anything to do in the 
first place with the misreporting of Lincoln. On the other hand, there is no doubt 
that the organ of Douglas treated Lincoln in a way of which no self-respecting 
newspaper would be guilty at this day. The accident of circumstances combined 
with the purpose of partisanship to make Lincoln ridiculous. Some things which 
do not appear in the histories may be told about the newspaper work on these 
debates. 

Shorthand men who could follow political speakers of all kinds were not 
numerous in those days. Douglas brought with him to Illinois for that campaign 
a Philadelphia stenographer — a Mr. Sheridan. The reports of Douglas' speeches 
which appeared in the Times were the work of Mr. Sheridan. Mr. Sheridan 
did not report Mr. Lincoln for the Times. There was the greatest possible diflfer- 
ence in the two speakers. "There is no orator in America more correct in 
rhetoric, more clear in ideas, more direct in purpose, in all his public addresses 



The Lincoln Scraphooks 53 

than Stephen A. Douglas," his organ said in the course of the controversy. This 
was but slightly exaggerated truth. People of this generation who read the 
beautifully rounded periods and clean-cut sentences of Douglas may imagine 
the words pouring forth in a rapid, unbroken stream. But Douglas was one of 
the most measured of American orators. If he was in public life today he would 
be the delight of beginners in stenography. He was distinct; he paused between 
sentences; he used short sentences; he rarely exceeded 120 words a minute. 
Every one at all versed in shorthand work will apreciate what that is. It means 
a speed which the ordinary stenographic secretary of to-day can easily follow. 
It was no trouble to report Douglas. "The Little Giant," as he was usually 
called by his admirers, had a deep bass voice. No bass voice can go fast. His 
sonorous tones filled out the time so that he did not seem to be speaking slowly. 
Even-paced is probably a better expression than deliberate to describe his manner. 
That Douglas uttered not nearly so many words as Lincoln in a given period is 
apparent in the reports of the debates. Each had the same time. But Lincoln's 
speeches occupy more space than Douglas'. 



Lincoln was altogether different. His voice was clear, almost shrill. Every 
syllable was distinct. But his delivery was puzzling to stenographers. He would 
speak several words with great rapidity, come to the word or phrase he wished 
to emphasize and let his voice linger and bear hard on that, and then he would 
rush to the end of the sentence like lightning. To impress the idea on the 
minds of his hearers was his aim; not to charm the ear with smooth, flowing 
words. It was very easy to understand Lincoln. He spoke with great clearness. 
But his delivery was very irregular. He would devote as nmch time to the word 
or two which he wished to emphasize as he did to half a dozen less important 
words following it. This peculiarity of Lincoln's delivery helped the Democrats 
in carrying out a plan to belittle him. The Democratic organ, the Chicago 
Times, called Lincoln's speech, "weak, faltering, childish twaddle," and endeavored 
to make it appear so. At Ottawa, on the occasion of the opening debate, Douglas 
spoke an hour. Lincoln followed with an hour and a half. Douglas closed in a 
half hour. The reporting of Lincoln for the Democratic paper was done by 
an English stenographer, who had the old style. His notes were almost 
unintelligible to the American stenographers. They were written out, and the 
editor of the Times, Mr. Sheehan, afterwards boasted editoriallj', "Lincoln's 
speech was printed verbatim, just as it came from the reporter." A single sen- 
tence taken from the scrapbook copy of the Times' report will serve to show 
how Lincoln was treated: 

"I will remind him also of a piece of Illinois of the time, when the respected 
party to which the judge belongs was displeased with a decision of the Supreme 
Court of Illinois, because they had decided that the governor could not 
remove a secretary of state, and he will not deny that he went in for overslaugh- 
ing that court by appointing five new judges, and it ended in his getting the name 
of Judge in that very way, thus breaking down the Supreme Court, and when 
he tells me about how a man who shall be appointed on such a principle, by 
being questioned, I say judge, you know you have tried it, and when he seeks 
that, the court will be prostituted below contempt." 

This was very small business. The newspaper which would instruct its 
telegraph editor and proofreader to follow an unrevised shorthand report with 
that kind of fidelity in this day and generation would hurt itself more than the 



54 A Reporter's Lincoln 

orator it aimed to disgrace. But this was the way Lincoln was reported at 
Ottawa, and the Douglas organ glorified in the showing. The Times continued 
to print full reports, and continued to claim that it printed them just as they 
came from the reporter. It was noticeable, however, that the report of Lincoln's 
speech at Freeport, the second debate, was somewhat better. This may be 
accounted for by the discovery on the part of the organ of Douglas that it had 
made a mistake in its treatment of his antagonist. After the Freeport report, 
the Times, acknowledging the improvement in the reading of the Lincoln speech, 
said: 

"The debate at Freeport was remarkable, first for the immense ability dis- 
played by Douglas, second for the weakness of Lincoln. We grant that he 
(Lincoln) spoke with rather more conspicuous fluency than is usual for him, but 
he failed utterly of coming up to the mark." 

It is noteworthy that while the Republicans from one end of Illinois to the 
other denounced the Chicago Times' report of Lincoln's speeches, Senator 
Douglas took occasion to address Mr. Hitt and to thank him for the accuracy 
with which his speeches had been reported for the Press and Tribune. 



Douglas and Lincoln did not travel together during the campaign of 1858. 
They saw very little of each other until they met upon the platforms at the 
appointed places. The first debate, at Ottawa, was on the 21st of August. The 
seventh was at Alton, on the 15th of October. The others were scattered along 
between these dates. The candidates had other engagements which kept them 
apart. They were moving nearly all of the time. Lincoln made over sixty 
speeches and Douglas made even more. The newspapers were well satisfied to 
give the verbatim reports of the joint debates. That was enterprise enough for 
those days. The newspapers did not attempt to give full reports of more than 
two or three of the other speeches. 

The way in which the reporting and the publishing of the debates was done 
was very different from the methods of today. Two stenographers did the actual 
reporting — Mr. Hitt for the Republicans and Mr. Sheridan for the Democrats, 
Mr. Lincoln being taken for the Times by a third stenographer, an Englishman. 
The wires were not used. An attempt to telegraph one of those joint debates 
would have paralyzed the telegraph company of that period, and would have 
bankrupted the newspaper. As soon as a debate was finished the reporters took 
the first train they could get and traveled to Chicago. En route, and after their 
arrival, they wrote out the speeches, which were published the second day after 
the debate took place. The reports appeared simultaneously. Each paper seemed 
to be satisfied not to be behind the other. No heroic efifort was inade by one to 
beat the other. But to accomplish publication by the second day after the debate was 
a feat which strained the resources of the two offices. On more than one of the 
seven occasions the newspapers contained apologies to their readers for being 
late in the morning because of the extra effort to get in the Lincoln and Douglas 
speeches in full. 



One particularly smart thing was done in connection with the Quincy debate. 
A train for Chicago departed while the speaking was in progress. The assistant 
of Mr. Hitt, a bright young man, picked up the notebook containing the report 
up to a few minutes before train time, ran to the train and started for Chicago. 



The Lincoln Scraphooks 55 

Mr. Hitt followed with the remainder of the notes on the next train after the 
debate closed. When he reached Chicago he found that his assistant had 
transcribed the greater part of the earlier portion of the debate and the matter 
was already in type. It several times happened that Mr. Hitt did not see consider- 
able portions of the notes after taking them until the matter appeared in the 
paper; the transcribing was done by the assistant, and the copy was rushed to the 
printers. The charge was made by the Democrats that "Mr. Judd, Judge Logan, 
Judge Davis, or some one else of great and conceded abilities," went over Lin- 
coln's speeches and fixed them up before publication. It is answered by the story 
of the way in which the reporting and publishing was done. So also is answered 
the Republican accusation that Douglas had access to the transcribed notes of 
Lincoln's speeches and mutilated them before they appeared in the Democratic 
paper. There was no time for revision or for putting up jobs with the manu- 
script by the principals in the debates. The misrepresentation of Lincoln in the 
Times was in accordance with the purpose to make him appear ignorant and 
uncouth in language beside Douglas. Among the reporters it was well under- 
stood that the report of Lincoln for the Times was to be done in a slovenly 
manner, to carry out the Democratic estimate of Lincoln. Sheridan, who reported 
Douglas for the Times, did not take Lincoln. He was above lending himself to 
such a dishonorable practice. He frequently talked privately about this treat- 
ment of Lincoln, but did not go further than to express his confidential opinion 
of it. 

The whole three hours' debate ran between six and eight columns — long, 
closely printed columns — of the four-page sheets of those days. There was 
another striking difference between the two orators, and it was a difference which 
impressed itself upon the reporters. Douglas had one great finished speech. He 
made it seven times. Of course, he varied somewhat in his introductions and in 
his specific replies to Lincoln's points. But his argument in defense of his general 
position on the slavery question was much the same each time. There were 
whole paragraphs which he repeated each time. Lincoln made seven speeches, 
like so many chapters in a book, or distinct divisions of an argument. He did 
not repeat himself. Douglas' speech was a carefully prepared effort. He ignored 
interruptions. Lincoln spoke extemporaneously, having only the outline of his 
argument in mind, answering suggestions from the audience and replying to 
every new point advanced by Douglas. 

The stenographers soon discovered that the senator was repeating himself 
largely. Mr. Hitt carried with him copies of previous speeches, and when he 
came to these repetitions he cut them out and pasted them in his report, thereby 
saving himself much work of transcribing. Sheridan, looking on at this saving 
of labor by means of a convenient bottle of mucilage, had his joke on more than 
one occasion. "Hitt," he was wont to say, "mucilates Douglas for the Press and 
Tribune, while (mentioning the name of the English stenographer) mutilates 
Lincoln for the Times." 



The joint debate which gave Lincoln the most satisfaction was the second — 
the one at Freeport. There he took up the seven questions Douglas had pro- 
pounded at Ottawa, and answered them one by one. When he had done so he 
said he would now put certain questions to Senator Douglas. To make the 
questions more impressive he drew from his pocket a single slip of paper and read 



56 A Reporter's Lincoln 

the four questions slowly. The purpose of Lincoln's questions was to make 
Douglas follow his great and fascinating doctrine of popular sovereignty to its 
logical conclusion, or else confess himself a demagogue. Three of the questions 
led up to the one which was the crucial test, in this form: 

"Can the people of a territory of the United States in any lawful way, against 
the wishes of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits 
prior to the formation of a state constitution?" 

If Douglas said "Yes" to this he parted company with the South, which was 
insisting on the right, according to the Dred Scott decision, to take slaves into 
the territories prior to the formation of a constitution. If Douglas said "No" he 
confessed that the great political dogma on which he had a personal patent — 
popular sovereignty, alias squatter sovereignty — was a delusion. 

Douglas, when his turn came to speak, took up the slip of paper, Lincoln 
having laid it down before him where he could not but take notice of it. He took 
it up, read the questions one by one and answered them. When he came to the 
all-important question he read it and threw down the slip of paper as if he was 
disposing of a most trifling matter. He was a great actor. He could simulate 
passion; he could assume wild rage and defiance. He would shake his head with 
its mass of hair like a wild bull, and his admirers would cheer and cheer. But it 
was all acting. Douglas was a veteran of debate. On this occasion, when he read 
the question on which everything turned, he treated it as trifling, and after casting 
it aside, he said: 

"I answer, emphatically, as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred 
times, from every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion the people of a territory 
can, by lawful means, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation 
of a state constitution." 

And a little further on he assumed to explain that the people of a territory 
could control slavery, "because it cannot exist unless by police regulations. Those 
regulations can only be established by the local legislature, and if the people 
are opposed to slavery they will elect representatives to that body who will, by 
unfriendly legislation, effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst." 



The full realization of what Douglas had done did not come to most of those 
who listened to him until afterward. His manner was well calculated to deceive. 
He answered this question on which his future turned as if it was of the slightest 
consequence. Lincoln undoubtedly knew what he was about, but the stories 
which have been circulated in later years concerning the four questions are for 
the most part apocryphal. Lincoln prepared the questions. He based them on a 
report of a speech Douglas had made a few days before at Blooniington. A 
copy of the Bloomington speech was before him, and after examining it carefully 
he wrote the questions, believing that Douglas must answer just as he did. The 
questions were no surprise to Douglas. They simply forced him to emphasize 
what he had said to his followers at Bloomington. They drew him out, how- 
ever, very clearly on an occasion when all he said was sure to get into print, 
under the fierce light of the debates, and to reach the whole country. The New 
York Tribune and other Eastern papers were reprinting the debates in full or 
nearly so. Some of Lincoln's friends claimed to have advised him strongly not 
to present the questions, telling him that Douglas was sure to stick to his 
popular sovereignty idea and that, if he did, he would certainly be elected senator. 
But Lincoln went ahead. Years afterward, in the light of events which followed, 



The Lincoln Scraphooks 57 

some of these friends concluded that Lincoln had the gift of foreknowledge and, 
in 1858, was building for 1860 and the presidency. A story which fits in here may 
be told. The evening after the debate closed the two champions were accom- 
panied by their respective friends to the depot to take the train. It was not long 
after the railroad had reached Freeport. Douglas was surrounded by a throng 
of enthusiastic and noisy admirers. Lincoln, as was usually the case, had with 
him a smaller and quieter escort. Lincoln had little to say. While waiting for 
the train he walked to the end of the platform and stood looking seriously toward 
the west where the sun had just set. Some one asked him: 

"Mr. Lincoln, how are you satisfied with the debate so far?" 

"Douglas may have beaten me to-day for the Senate," was the reply, "but I 
have stopped him from being president." 

This story may be true. The fact is, however, it did not begin to have 
circulation until four years after the Freeport meeting, when Lincoln was in the 
White House and the popular demand for Lincoln stories had developed. 

At the third debate, held at Jonesboro, a strongly Democratic locality, where 
only about 2000 people were present, Lincoln pressed Douglas hard on the 
answer to the Freeport questions. He insisted that Douglas must explain how in 
the light of the Dred Scott decision the people of a territory could control the 
introduction of slavery. Douglas' reply was ingenious, but it was not satisfactory. 
It turned the South against him. Six weeks afterwards Douglas was burned in 
effigy at Norfolk, Va. 



President McKinley's Lincoln Story 

Washington is an interesting center for news and gossip, but it is the worst 
place in the country for the formation of judgment on public sentiment. It is 
historically uncertain in that rescpect. A Washington correspondent wrote to 
his editor that public sentiment in Washington indicated something. The editor 
wrote back that public sentiment in Washington meant nothing. President 
McKinley in crises never made the mistake of some of his predecessors, — that 
sentiment in Washington was a safe guide as to conditions of sentiment in the 
country at large. He, personally, went through many letters that came to the 
W^hite House. He did more of this than most presidents have done. He had a 
selected list of newspapers representing all parts of the country and all shades 
of politics. He read these, not trusting to any private secretary to cull for him. 
One day a public man called at the White House and undertook to tell Mr. 
McKinley what the sentiment in Washington was upon a pending question. 
Mr. McKinley checked the visitor and asked him if he had ever heard the story 
of President Lincoln and Leonard Swett. Mr. Swett had come to Washington 
at a critical period and called at the White House. President Lincoln asked 
him when he had arrived in the capital. Swett replied in a general way. Mr. 
Lincoln repeated the inquiry in such form as to bring from Mr. Swett the 
information that he had come in by the latest train, about an hour previous. 
"Oh!" said Mr. Lincoln, "all right. How are things? If you had been in Washington 
all day, I wouldn't ask you. You would have heard so much your opinion wouldn't 
be worth anything." 

"The national capital, or a state capital, is a bad place to form proper 
estimates of public sentiment. You can hear too much," was President 
McKinley's moral drawn from this Lincoln story. 



58 A Reporter's Lincoln 

How He Studied German 

Of Lincoln getting up early and using the circuit clerk's office for study of 
the German language, Luman Burr had a definite recollection. Mr. Burr was the 
deputy clerk of McLean County, of which Bloomington is the seat. His service 
extended from 1857 to 1862. During the early part of it Mr. Burr formed the 
acquaintance of Mr. Lincoln. 

"I was only a boy of 20 years, and just from the East," he said. "As the 
deputy clerk, I came to know Mr. Lincoln, but not in an intimate way. I came 
to know him so well, however, that the caricature of him in a book called 'The 
Crisis,' by a man named Churchill, fills me with wrath. 

"In the old Courthouse at Bloomington," continued Mr. Burr, "Judge Davis 
had his desk in the same office with William McCullough, the clerk of the Circuit 
Court. Mr. Lincoln was a great friend of both of them. There was a large, 
round table in the clerk's office, and in the winter time there was a good fire 
in a big box stove. Mr. Lincoln had a habit of coming there mornings before 
court to read or study. Other lawyers would drop in. Leonard Swett, William 
H. Hanna, Asahel Gridley, John M. Scott, Ward H. Lamon and others were 
often there. The conversation of such men to a young man just from a New 
England farm was a revelation. I have heard Mr. Lincoln talk, tell stories, try 
lawsuits and lecture. One morning, I recollect in particular, he was in the 
clerk's office studying German. He looked up and said: 'Here is a curious thing: 
the Germans have no word for thimble; they call it a finger hat (fingerhut). 
And they have no word for glove; they call it a hand shoe (handschuh). And 
then came one of Mr. Lincoln's inimitable laughs." 



He Established Standard Gauge 

President Lincoln, said L. D. Yager, the Alton (111.) attorney, is to be credited 
with the establishment of what is known as standard gauge in railroad construc- 
tion. This Lincoln story is not only interesting in itself, but it is illustrative of 
the faculty for settling controversies which Mr. Lincoln possessed. Mr. Lincoln 
was the personification of fairness. If such a result had been within human 
agency. President Lincoln would have averted the civil war by a settlement which 
would have preserved the Union and gradually abolished slavery. Standard 
gauge is 4 feet 8^ inches between rails. Many people have wondered about that 
half inch. 

"When the Union Pacific, the first transcontinental railroad project, reached 
the stage of legislation there was necessary, of course, an enabling act," said 
Mr. Yager. "One branch of Congress insisted that the rails should be 4 feet and 
10 inches apart. The other body wanted a gauge of 4 feet and 7 inches. On an 
issue, apparently so trivial, the Senate and House took opposing sides. The 
question was taken to the White House by interested parties. President Lincoln 
was asked to express his opinion as to the proper width for a transcontinental 
railroad track. He took IJ^ inches from the wider gauge and added it to the 
narrower gauge, making the width 4 feet SJ/^ inches. In other words, he split the 
difference. The compromise was accepted by the law-makers and standard gauge 
was fixed thereby. Other railroads conformed to this government gauge, one 
after another, until it became the almost universal width between rails." 



The Bowl of Custard 

When Lincoln "rode the circuit" Bloomington was a literary and social 
center. Springfield might claim political pre-eminence, as the state capital, but 
Bloomington performed the rites of hospitality in a way which charmed her 
guests. The visiting lawyers were entertained during court weeks. Little parties 
were given in their honor. And Lincoln was the life of these social gatherings. 

"I was acquainted with Mr. Lincoln from 1845 to his election as president," 
said Mrs. Judith A. Bradner, when she was 95 years old. "I am happy to say 
that I have entertained him in my house often when our city was but a village. 
The lawyers would come to Bloomington twice a year to attend court for two 
weeks. During court weeks here five of us ladies would entertain the lawyers 
with parties. All of them seemed to enjoy these gatherings. When the two 
weeks of court were up, Mr. Lincoln would say regretfully, 'Well, our parties 
are through until fall.' The last time Mr. Lincoln visited us he was in fine 
spirits. The ceilings in our house were not as high as they are nowadays. Mr. 
Lincoln struck his head against the chandelier and then apologized, saying, 'We 
haven't got these things at our house.' At another time he remarked, 'Ladies, 
excuse me, but this is the nicest party we have had, and we did not have any 
custard, either.' 

The reference to the custard Mrs. Bradner explained. One of the stopping 
places on the circuit was Barnett's tavern at Clinton. 

"Mrs. Barnett," Mrs. Bradner said, "always made a large bowl of custard 
for the visiting lawyers. One time when the lawyers arrived at Barnett's and 
came to the table Mr. Lincoln pointed to the usual bowl of custard and said to 
Judge Davis. 'Did you ever see anything keep like that custard? It looks just 
as it did when we left it last fall.' The old lady made no more custard for the 
lawyers." 



Neither card playing nor dancing entered into the social entertainments 
which the ladies of Bloomington provided for the lawyers during court week, as 
Mrs. Bradner remembers. There was conversation and Mr. Lincoln was the 
leading personality in the gathering. Occasionally there was singing. Mrs. 
Bradner remembers that Mrs. David Davis stood by a chair and sang some of the 
songs of that day. The words of one of these songs of the fifties Mrs. Bradner 
repeated without any hesitation: 

So Miss Myrtle is going to marry? 

What a number of hearts she will break! 
There's Tom Brown, Lord George and Sir Harry, 

All dying of love for her sake. 
'Tis the match we all must approve, 

Let the gossips say what they can, 
For she's really a charming woman, 

And he's a most fortunate man. 
Chorus — 'Tis a match that we all must approve, 

Let the gossips say what they can, 
Yes, she's really a charming woman, 
And he's a most fortunate man. 



60 A Reporter's Lincoln 

vShe's studied both Latin and Greek, 

And I'm told that she solved a problem 
In Euclid before she could speak. 

And the old lady spoke then; 
"Had she been but a daughter of mine 

I'd taught her to knit and to sew, 
But her mother, a charming woman, 

Couldn't think of such trifles, you know." 
Chorus — 'Tis a match that we all must approve, etc. 



"Mr. Lincoln never seemed to me to look awkward or to be careless about 
his appearance but once, that I can remember," Mrs. Bradner said. "Mr. Douglas 
came to Bloomington to make a speech and I went to hear him. As we got 
near to the crowd I saw a man sitting on a log, stooping over with his hat on 
the ground in front of him. I didn't recognized the man, but thought to myself 
he looked rather careless. Once in a while the man would reach down, pick up 
some paper, write on it, and throw it in his hat. When I came nearer I saw it 
was Mr. Lincoln. I realized then that he was sitting back there taking notes of 
what Mr. Douglas was saying. 

"The time that Mr. Lincoln attended the party at our house and struck his 
head against the chandelier, he passed it off so nicely it did not seem awkward- 
ness on his part. In fact, he hit the chandelier twice with his head. The second 
time he said, 'Well, that was an awkward piece of business. You know we 
haven't got those things at our house.' 

"Mr. Lincoln was a kindly, patient man," said Mrs. Bradner. "I visited in 
Springfield and knew of his home life. Mrs. Capt. Bradford was a neighbor of 
the Lincolns. She told me that Mrs. Lincoln would put the baby in the carriage 
and that Mr. Lincoln would wheel it up and down the street after the other men 
had gone down to the business of their offices. Mrs. Bradford said to Mr. 
Lincoln one day, 'I think that is pretty business for you to be engaged in, when 
you ought to be down to your law office.' Mr. Lincoln looked at her and said 
slowly, 'I promised.' And then he went on with the baby carriage." 

"Mr. Lincoln was not so careless about how his clothes looked as some people 
say," continued Mrs. Bradner. "I recollect one afternoon he was called on to go 
to tea at somebody's house in Tremont. He had been lying on the grass read- 
ing. He said he couldn't go and as a reason showed a hole in the elbow of his 
coat. The excuse wasn't accepted. Mr. Lincoln yielded and went to the tea, but 
he sat through it with one hand over that hole in the elbow." 

Mrs. Bradner told of a visit she made to Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln at their 
Springfield home. 

"At the time Mr. Lincoln was elected," she said, "I was in Springfield with 
my sister, Mrs. Albert Jones. We went to the Lincolns the next day to offer 
our congratulations. Mr. Lincoln was in fine spirits. He told us he thought 
he had a good joke on his wife. Pointing to Mrs. Lincoln he said, 'She locked 
me out.' Mrs. Lincoln said to him: 'Don't ever tell that again.' But Mr. Lin- 
coln laughed and went on with the story. He said Mrs. Lincoln had said when 
he went downtown in the evening to hear the returns that if he wasn't at home 
by 10 o'clock she would lock him out. And she did so. But, Mr. Lincoln said 
that when she heard the music coming to serenade them she turned the key in 
a hurry." 



Albert Blair's Three Vivid Impressions 

Three vivid impressions Albert Blair of St. Louis received of Lincoln. He 
was a native of Pike County, Illinois, a strongly Democratic section of the state, 
a section where Douglas was a political idol. 

"The Senator," said Mr. Blair, "opened his campaign in 1858, early in August, 
by a speech at Pittsfield, the county town. His devoted constituents were present 
in great numbers, and to my young eyes he seemed to be the greatest personage 
in the nation — dignified, eloquent and masterful. The idea that Abe Lincoln, the 
story-telling rail splitter, should presume to meet him in debate seemed 
ridiculous. In October following I was present at Quincy, 111., where a joint 
debate between the champions occurred. I was surprised at the very large 
number of Republicans present, and their enthusiasm. The 'Little Giant' in 
appearance and behavior that day disappointed me. His face was red, his voice 
husky, and his temper irritable. Mr. Lincoln was treble-toned, buoyant and 
aggressive. The manner in which at times he would tax "my friend Judge 
Douglas," with a troublesome question, or answer him humorously with 'that 
reminds me of a story,' or with some other form of telling repartee, all result- 
ing in tremendous laughter and applause, however it may have affected Mr. 
Douglas certainly worried me very much, and, although I was too young to 
appreciate the arguments of the respective disputants, I went away with an 
improved opinion of the strength of the Republican party and of the capabili- 
ties of Abraham Lincoln. 



"In 1859 and 1860 I was a student at Phillips-Exeter Academy, fitting for 
Harvard College. Robert Lincoln was there at the same time as a student. 
My interest in politics was strong, and I was still, hoping that the great Illinois 
Senator might gain the presidency. Early in 1860 Mr. Lincoln made a trip to 
New York and New England. His speech at Cooper Institute, New York, 
attracted great attention, and brought him prominently forward as a possible 
nominee of the Republican party for the presidency. Naturally, his visit to 
Exeter to see his son was a notable event in the annals of that old academic 
town. On Saturday night of his stay he made a political speech in the town 
hall. The audience was large, and composed of the best people. Hon. Amos 
Tuck presided. 

"By this time, as an Illinoisan, I was sensible with pride of the increasing 
fame of Mr. Lincoln, and hoped he might make a good impression. With one of 
Exeter's charming daughters I sat in the front row of seats, where I had the 
best opportunity to hear and observe the speaker. We could not help noticing 
his lankness of stature, and an occasional uncouth posture or gesture. Some of 
his Western sayings must have sounded very odd to the precise easterlings. 
The attitude of the pro-slavery leaders toward Mr. Douglas, he said, reminded 
him of a story of a farmer out West who had a troublesome dog, and wished to 
get rid of him. One bitter cold night the farmer decided to freeze the dog by 
shutting him out in the cold; but somehow the dog would always find an 
opportunity to get back within doors. Finally the farmer, in greater dcterina- 
tion, undertook personally to hold the dog on the north side of the house until 



62 A Reporter's Lincoln 

the poor creature should succumb. But the dog was the better stayer of the two, 
and the farmer conchided to adjourn the killing until a more favorable season. 

"During his speech Mr. Lincoln would occasionally put a question to the 
audience and pause for a reply. In one instance he looked about from side to 
side with an eager, expectant look; no reply coming, he good humoredly said, 
'You people here don't jaw back at a fellow as they do out West.' 

"These peculiarities did not detract from the general eflfect. Above the 
grotesque and the humorous a lofty feeling was dominant. Whether in boldly 
meeting the imperious legalism of the South, or in laying bare the equivocations 
of the Douglas doctrine, or in discussing generally the great issues before the 
nation, there was ever the clear, earnest call to reason in behalf of human rights 
which did not fail to impress every hearer. 



"The month of February, 1865, shortly before the close of the war, and the 
death of Mr. Lincoln, I spent in Washington. On one occasion I attended a 
reception at the White House. It was a general reception, open to everybody. 
The procession of visitors included soldiers and civilians of every rank. Mr. 
Lincoln was stationed in one of the smaller rooms, and was attended by Judge 
David Davis. In the same room were a number of handsomely dressed ladies, 
including Mrs. Lincoln. The visitor was directed by officers first to enter the 
ante-room, where he gave his name to a lieutenant, and was by the lieutenant 
conducted and introduced to Judge Davis, and by Judge Davis to the president. 
A handshake and a word was all that could be practically extended, and the visitor 
was expected to move along to the larger East room. After my presentation 
and handshake I, in company with a friend, who was familiar with the etiquette 
of the White House, stepped aside from the line of exit and took my station for a few 
moments near the group of ladies, in order that I might have an opportunity to 
observe the president. I stood near enough to hear Mr. Lincoln in conversation 
with Judge Davis, which necessarily was quite desultory. The interruptions 
were incessant. Now it was 'How do you do. Colonel?' or 'My brave boy.' 'I 
am glad to see you,' or some other word of cordial recognition. There was no 
ofificial starchiness or affectation. I was, in fact, impressed with the lack of 
conventional tone and bearing. I heard Mr. Lincoln, in a most unaflfected way, 
and in a tone, if not loud, certainly not confined to the judge's hearing, exclaim to 
Judge Davis, 'Judge, I never knew until the other day how to spell the word 
'maintenance.' ' Then occurred a handshake, or howdy do with some visitor. 'I 
always thought it was 'm-a-i-n, main, t-a-i-n, tain, a-n-c-e, ance — maintainance,' 
but I find that it is 'm-a-i-n, main, t-e te, n-a-n-c-c, nance — maintenance.' ' This 
was a spectacle! The President of a great nation at a formal reception, sur- 
rounded by many eminent people, statesmen, ministers, scholars, critics and ultra- 
fashionable people — by all sorts — who honestly and unconcernedly, in the most 
unconventional way, speaks before all as it were, of a personal thing illustrative 
of his own deficiency. 

"Whether on the platform in a Western town, or before a cultivated audience 
in New England, or at the very seat of authority of a great nation, he was ever 
the same, unaffectedly honest and open to every observer." 



The Friend of the Boys 

When William B. Thompson of the St. Louis bar was a boy he went fishing 
with Abraham Lincoln. That was before Mr. Lincoln was a candidate for 
president; earlier even than the historic Lincoln-Douglas debates. It was when 
Mr. Lincoln was practicing law in Springfield and wanted a day oflf. Then he 
would put the neighbors' boys into the family carryall, as many as could be 
crowded in, and drive away to the banks of the Sangamon. The Lincoln whom 
William B. Thompson remembered best was not the lawyer, the orator, the 
candidate, the president, but the friend and associate of every boy on the street 
where he lived in Springfield. 

"I lived half a block from Mr. Lincoln's," said Mr. Thompson, "and visited 
at the house, but more frequently I met Air. Lincoln on the street as I went to 
and from school. Mr. Lincoln was not an observant man on the street; in fact, 
he hardly ever saw us unless we spoke to him. He walked along with his hands 
behind him, gazing upward and noticing nobody. But it was usual for all of 
the boys in the neighborhood to speak to him as we met him. He had endeared 
himself to all of us by reason of the interest he took in us. When one of us 
spoke to him as he was walking along in his absorbed manner he would stop 
and acknowledge the greeting pleasantly. If the boy was small Mr. Lincoln 
would often take him up in his arms and talk to him. If the boy was larger Mr. 
Lincoln would shake hands and talk with him. It he didn't recall the face he 
would ask the name, and if he recognized it he would say, 'Oh, yes; I remember 
you.' If the boy was a comparative stranger Mr. Lincoln would treat him so 
pleasantly that the boy always wanted to speak to Mr. Lincoln after that when- 
ever he met him. 

"But besides showing interest in us. Air. Lincoln was exceedingly popular 
with the boys in the neighborhood because of the fishing trips of the Sangamon 
river he took with us. He owned a bay horse, which was called a 'shaved-tail' 
horse. He had a 'calash,' as the roomy vehicle was known. Into the calash Mr. 
Lincoln would put all of the boys of the neighborhood who could crowd in, and 
drive out to the Sangamon. We carried our lunches and spent the whole day. 
After we were pretty well tired tramping about we spread out the lunches. Mr. 
Lincoln sat down with us. When we had eaten he told us stories and enter- 
tained us with his funny comments. No boy who had accompanied Mr. Lincoln 
on one of these fishing trips willingly missed another. Johnny Spriggs was one 
of those boys. He lived in our block. His mother was a widow. John Spriggs 
was hardly grown when four or five years afterward he went into the Union 
Army. He became an officer of distinction. For a long time he was connected 
with the Rice-Stix dry goods house in St. Louis. As long as he lived John 
Spriggs remembered and told those stories he heard from Lincoln on our fish- 
ing trips. One of the neighbors was Jesse K. Du Bois, who had two boys, one 
of whom became a United States senator from Idaho. John G. Ives had three 
sons. Mr. Lincoln's boys were Robert and Tad. The neighborhood was well 
built up and nearly every family had boys. We went to a school which was 
called "the college." One of the principal teachers was Dr. Reynolds, father 
of Judge George D. Reynolds of St. Louis, of tiie St. Louis Court of Appeals. 
George attended the school. Boys came from the counties around Springfield 
to prepare for college." 



64 A Reporter's Lincoln 

"A case that Mr. Lincoln had in court at Springfield about 1857 won him 
great admiration from the boys," Mr. Thompson recalled. "Quinn Harrison was 
charged with murder. Lincoln defended him. Harrison and Crafton, who was 
killed, were young fellows. They lived at Pleasant Plains, in Sangamon County. 
Harrison was a grandson of Peter Cartwright, the famous pioneer preacher and 
circuit rider. Crafton was killed as the result of a quarrel. The feeling was quite 
strong between the friends of the two young men. Harrison was prosecuted by 
some of the ablest talent at the Springfield bar. My recollection is that James 
A. Matheney, who was considered one of the strongest lawyers there at the time, 
was the prosecuting attorney. Mr. Lincoln saved Quinn Harrison, but it was a 
very hard fight. We boys followed it throughout. All of us who were able 
climbed to the windows. The others hung around the doors of the old court- 
house. We listened with most careful attention to everything Lincoln said. His 
argument to the jury for Quinn Harrison made a lasting impression upon us. 
At that time Lincoln had not become famous as a debater. Harrison was 
acquitted. We boys agreed that Lincoln's speech and earnest manner did it, 
rather than the evidence. 

"I think, perhaps, the Springfield boys recognized the power of Lincoln's 
eloquence earlier than did some of their elders," continued Mr. Thompson, 
thoughtfully. "Springfield in that day had a number of lawyers who had won 
fame at the bar. Milton Hay, the brother of John Hay, had come up from 
Belleville with a great reputation as a lawyer. John A. McClernand was known 
in all that part of Illinois as the 'Grecian orator' because of the many quotations 
from the classics he put into his speeches. McClernand was called the most 
scholarly man at the Springfield bar. 

"It was said that he had studied with the view of entering the priesthood, 
but had taken up the law instead. Logan, Stuart, Edwards, Matheney and Conk- 
ling were considered eminent lawyers. Some of them stood so high that they 
did not have to go 'on the circuit.' Business came to them in Springfield. But 
with the acquittal of Quinn Harrison all of the boys agreed that Mr. Lincoln was 
their ideal. We took every opportunity to hear Lincoln speak. The campaign of 
1858 was notable for the number of boys who attended whenever Lincoln spoke. 
We talked politics. We knew all about the 'Kansas-Nebraska bill.' Stephen 
A. Douglas was a favorite orator when the campaign opened. He was very 
widely known. He had practised law in Jacksonville, Beardstown and Spring- 
field and was personally acquainted with every man of prominence. Lincoln 
was not so well known. Some of the politicians belittled Lincoln. They did not think 
he was up to the standard of Douglas, who had been quite a figure in the Senate. But 
the Springfield boys followed the debate with great confidence in Mr. Lincoln. 
They never forgot the Quinn Harrison speech. It wasn't long after the speak- 
ing opened in the campaign before public sentiment as to the relative strength 
of Lincoln and Douglas in debate began to change. The older people began to 
see Lincoln in the estimate the boys had put upon him. While Lincoln did not 
succeed in winning the senatorship from Douglas, the feeling grew that his 
position was the stronger. Lincoln's speeches in that campaign of 1858 made a 
very strong impression. 

"The day Mr. Lincoln left Springfied in 1861 to go to Washington for the 
inauguration was the last time I saw him. All of the boys were at the station, 
and the most enthusiastic cheering came from them. Some of the older people 
looked very serious; they were predicting that Mr. Lincoln would not be allowed 



The Friend of the Boys 65 

to reach Washington; that he would be stopped if he tried to pass through Mary- 
land. Many believed there would be interference. I remember that I went up to 
John Hay, who was going with Mr. Lincoln, and asked him if he had any doubt 
about getting through. As we young fellows shouted our farewell to Mr. Lin- 
coln that day we felt as if we were parting from a personal friend to whom we 
were deeply attached." 



"Mr. Lincoln was liked by young and old because he liked both young and 
old," George Perrin Davis of Bloomington said. He treasured an autograph 
album in which distinguished men, who were the guests or friends of his father, 
Mr. Justice David Davis, wrote their sentiments and names at his youthful 
requests. Before Mr. Lincoln was nominated for president — indeed, just after 
Mr. Lincoln had been beaten for the senatorship by Mr. Douglas — Geoge Perrin 
Davis selected him for first place in the autograph album. And Mr. Lincoln 
wrote: 

"My young friend, George Perrin Davis, has allowed me the honor of being 

the first to write his name in this book. 

"A. LINCOLN. 

"Bloomington, December 21, 1858." 

Abraham Lincoln and George Perrin Davis, with a third of a century 
between their ages, were friends. Mr. Lincoln was a visitor at the Davis home 
from the earliest time that George Perrin Davis could remember. One year 
George Perrin Davis "rode the circuit" day after day, week after week, the boy 
companion of Mr. Lincoln. 

"The eighth circuit," he said, "as established in 1847, extended on the north 
from Woodford to the Indiana state line, south as far as Shelby and the western 
counties were Sangamon, Logan and Tazewell. It had nearly 11,000 square 
miles, about one-fifth of the whole state. There were no mail roads for many 
years and but few bridges over the rivers. Courts were held in the various 
counties twice a year, lasting from two or three days to a week. After court had 
adjourned in one county, the judge rode to the next county seat, and was followed 
by the state's attorney, whose authority extended over the whole circuit, and by 
some of the lawyers to a few of the counties near their homes. Mr. Lincoln, 
however, rode the entire circuit to all of the courts, which lasted about three 
months in the spring and three in the fall. Most of the lawyers rode horseback. 
After a few years my father, who was the circuit judge, and Mr. Lincoln were 
able to afford a buggy. My father, who was a very heavy man, used two horses. 
Mr. Lincoln had a one-horse open buggy and drove his horse, 'Old Buck,' as I 
remember his name. In the fall of 1850, when I was 8 years old, my mother 
went around the circuit with my father and Mr. Lincoln took me in his buggy. I 
have a distinct recollection of Mr. Lincoln, the horse and the buggy, but can not 
remember much of what Mr. Lincoln said." 

Boylike, Mr. Davis received some impressions on that trip which he recalled 
fifty years later. At Danville he saw his first coal fire, except in a forge, and 
amused himself heating and bending the poker. At Springfield the state's 
attorney, Mr. Campbell, delighted the boy with the gift of some percussion caps, 
which Master George proceeded to explode upon the wheels of Mr. Lincoln's 
buggy, getting some of the copper into his face. One incident was very 
characteristic of the age of Mr. Lincoln's associate on the memorable trip. The 



66 A Reporter's Lincoln 

boy wished to know from his own observation how tall Mr. Lincoln was. And 
the lawyer was obliging. 

"Mr. Lincoln," said Mr. Davis, "was very tall, 6 feet ^1/2 inches, as I measured 
him although he gives it himself in his autobiography, addressed to Jesse W. 
Fell, at 6 feet 4 inches nearly; but when he became much interested in his speech 
he looked as if he was 8 feet high." 

At the home of his friend. Judge Davis, Mr. Lincoln spent considerable time 
in 1858, "while he was writing some of his debates with Mr. Douglas," George 
Perrin Davis recalled. Most of Mr. Lincoln's speeches were not written out in 
advance of delivery. Those for the joint debates were prepared with extra- 
ordinary care. 

"Mr. Lincoln," said Mr. Davis, "did not care much about dress, though he 
was always clean. I thought his clothes were too short for him, especially his 
coat. For a necktie he wore an old-fashioned stiff stock, which clasped around 
his neck. When he got interested in his speech he would take it off and unbutton 
his shirt and give room for his Adam's apple to play up and down. He had a 
clear voice that could be heard a great distance, every word of a sentence equally 
clear, a great contrast to Mr. Douglas, who failed sometimes to send every word 
the same distance. Mr. Lincoln was clean shaven until he was elected president." 

The historical society at Bloomington preserves as one of its most valued 
records the tribute paid by Senator Daniel W. Voorhees of Indiana, who as a 
young lawyer practiced in the courts of Illinois along the Indiana line and met 
Mr. Lincoln and Judge Davis frequently. Of Lincoln and Douglas, Senator 
Voorhees wrote: 

"They made such an impression on me as no two other men whom I have 
met in the tide of time or of whom I have read in the realm of history." 



George T. M. Davis, the Alton editor, twenty-five years the friend of Lincoln, 
left his family an unpublished autobiography. A limited number of copies was 
printed and given to personal friends. In this way has been preserved the narra- 
tive of an incident revealing Lincoln, the father. Affection for his sons was a 
marked trait of Mr. Lincoln. There are many stories illustrative of that. But 
the methods Mr. Lincoln employed to instill into the minds of his boys the 
cardinal virtues have received little attention from the biographers. Mr. Davis 
told what he witnessed on one occasion: 

"I made a visit on business one summer to Springfield, where Mr. Lincoln 
resided. While I was standing on the sidewalk, on the shady side of the hotel 
where I was stopping, Mr. Lincoln came along with his youngest pet boy. Tad, 
who was holding on to the tip of the tail of father's frock coat. We drew up 
chairs in the shade and at once engaged in talking politics. Tad changed his 
position by taking refuge between his father's knees, and remained there a silent 
listener during our conversation. In a short time Bob, who was considerably 
older than Tad, came along, and, noticing us, also stopped and joined our circle. 
In a side conversation that ensued between the two brothers, the purport of which 
I had not noticed, something was said that induced their father to pause for a 
moment in his talk with me, and, turning to the boys, he exclainaed: 

" 'Tad, show Mr. Davis the knife I bought you yesterday,' and, turning to 
me, he added, 'It's the first knife Tad ever had, and it's a big thing for him.' 

"Tad hesitating and making no repl}% his father asked. 'You haven't lost your 
knife, have you?' 



The Friend of the Boys 67 

" 'No, but I ain't got any,' the boy said. 

'"What has become of it?' inquired Mr. Lincoln in his quizzical and usual 
smiling, pleasant way. There was another momentary pause on the part of 
Tad, when he replied to his father, in the fullness of his childish simplicity, and 
the truthfulness which was a prominent element of his birthright: 

" 'Bob told me if he was me, he'd swap my knife for candy.' 

"At this Air. Lincoln gave one of his good-natiired laughs, and turning to Bob 
— who by this time bore somewhat the semblance of slight embarrassment — 
but without the slighest change in either his merry tone or manner, asked: 

" 'Bob, how much did you pay for that candy?' 

"Bob naming the price, his father said to him, 'Why, Tad's knife cost three 
bits (37^ cents); do you think you made a fair trade with Tad?' 

"Bob, in a prompt and manly tone, which I shall never forget, answered his 
father, 'No, sir,' and taking the knife out of his pocket, said 'Here, Tad, is your 
knife,' which Tad, with evident delight, took back, but without a word of com- 
ment. Their father, however, said to the eldest: 

" 'I guess. Bob, that's about right on your part, and now, Tad, as you've 
got your knife, you must give back to Bob the candy he gave you for the knife.' 

"Tad exclaimed, 'I can't, 'cause I ate up all the candy Bob give me, and I 
ain't got no money to buy it.' 

"'Oh!' said Mr. Lincoln, 'what will you do them? Bob must have his candy 
back to make things square between you.' 

"Tad was evidently in a quandary, and was at a loss how to get out of it, 
but his father, after waiting a few moments, and without making the slightest 
comment, handed Tad a bit {12Y2 cents). Tad looked at it with a good deal of 
satisfaction and shrieked out in his boyish glee: 

" 'Come on. Bob, I'll get your candy back for you.' 

"Both the father and I joined in a hearty laugh, and as the boys started oflf 
Mr. Lincoln called out to them: 

" 'Boys, I reckon that's about right between you. Bob, do you take Tad 
right home as soon as he has paid you the candy.' 

"Such was the sense and conviction of duty, justice, honor, integrity and 
truthfulness of Abraham Lincoln." 



Mr. Lincoln did not hesitate to tell the same story more than once, or to 
vary it to make the application fit. He also modified or amended those apt say- 
ings, which will never die, in order that they might suit diflferent occasions. Maj. 
William K. Patrick of St. Louis recalled the story about the brand of whiskey 
which Grant drank, but he obtained it from another source than the late Henry 
T. Blow, and in somewhat diflferent form from the version which William Hyde 
used to tell. Mr. Hyde, afterwards editor, was a reporter of the Missouri Repub- 
lican when Mr. Blow brought the story to St. Louis from Washington, during 
the war, and gave it local currency. 

"The story as I heard it," said Maj. Patrick, "was that President Lincoln 
made use of the inquiry in conversation with Capt. W. J. Kountz. Capt. Kountz, 
a wealthy steamboatman from Pittsburg, had obtained from the secretary of the 
treasury, through his Pennsylvania friends, a permit to buy cotton outside the 
Union military lines and ship the same up North. Capt. Kountz presented the 
permit to Gen. Grant, who refused to allow the agents of the captain to go 
beyond the military lines around Memphis. The captain was very indignant at 



68 A Reporter's Lincoln 

being turned down, and took himself back to Washington. Calling on Mr. Lin- 
coln, he stated his case, and demanded that Gen. Grant be relieved as commander 
of the Department of the Tennessee. To make his case as strong as possible, 
he said that Gen. Grant was a hard drinker. Mr. Lincoln listened with his usual 
patience to the tirade and asked Capt. Kountz what brand of whiskey Gen. Grant 
used. The captain said he didn't know. Then Mr. Lincoln said: 'Find out and 
let me know, so I can send a barrel to each of my generals.' " 



Mr. Lincoln's different ways of telling the same story was illustrated in con- 
nection with the historic joint debates. At one of those meetings Mr. Douglas 
said something half-way complimentary to Mr. Lincoln. When Mr. Lincoln 
arose he acknowledged the consideration of Senator Douglas, and added he felt 
a good deal as did the Hoosier who said he liked gingerbread better than any- 
body on this earth, and got less of it than anybody on this earth. In as much as 
Senator Douglas had been anything but complimentary before that meeting, and 
in as much as Mr. Lincoln had been unmercifully abused and misrepresented by 
the opposition from the beginning of the debates up to that time, the Hoosier 
story caught the popular sense of humor and made a great hit. That was in 1858. 
Several years afterwards, while he was in the White House, President Lincoln 
made use of the same story, but amplified it, showing its origin. The application 
was as happy as that in response to Douglas' faint praise. A Southerner, who 
had not gone with the Confederacy, but who had remained in Washington and 
had gradually overcome his intense personal prejudices toward Mr. Lincoln after 
several interviews with him, said to the president one day that he had heard 
everything mean about him that could be said of a man except one failing; he 
had never heard that Mr. Lincoln was too fond of the pleasures of life. Mr. 
Lincoln looked thoughtful at his rather meager, if not begrudged, tribute, and 
after a little hesitation said he was reminded of what a boy had said to him when 
he was quite small. 

"Once in awhile my mother used to get some sorghum and ginger and make 
some gingerbread," was the way Mr. Lincoln told it. "It wasn't often, and it 
was our biggest treat. One day I smelled the gingerbread and came into the 
house to get my share while it was hot. My mother had baked me three ginger- 
bread men. I took them out under a hickory tree to eat them. There was a 
family near us that was a little poorer than we were, and their boy came along 
as I sat down. 

"'Abe,' he said, 'gimme a man?' 

"I gave him one. He crammed it into his mouth in two bites and looked at 
me while I was biting the legs from my first one. 

" 'Abe,' he said, 'gimme that other'n.' 

"I wanted it myself, but I gave it to him, and as it followed the first I said 
to him, 'You seem to like gingerbread?' 

" 'Abe,' he said, 'I don't suppose there's anybody on this earth likes ginger- 
bread better'n I do.' He drew a long breath before he added, 'and I don't suppose 
there's anybody on this earth gets less'n I do.' " 

The old Southerner who told this remarked that when Mr. Lincoln had 
finished the story there didn't seem to be anything more to be said. 



The Bixby Collection 



Abraham Lincoln stands at the head of the class of American presidents in 
penmanship, in spelling, in punctuation and in grammatical construction. "Awk- 
ward," "uncouth," "ungainly" are some of the adjectives used to describe him 
physically. And yet when Air. Lincoln took pen in hand he wrote "like copper- 
plate." The letters were distinct. The words were complete. The writing was 
as easily read as print. There was mechanical finish and perfection about a 
specimen of Mr. Lincoln's writing, whether he used the old quill, the pencil or 
the pen. Eugene Field, the poet, wrote a style that was very like that of Mr. 
Lincoln. At the age of 23 Mr. Lincoln could have qualified for teacher of pen- 
manship in a commercial college. At the age of 50, with the crowded law practice 
and with the rush of political correspondence upon him, he did not do as fine 
pen work as in his younger days. When he began law practice he had time to 
carry out his liking for a beautifully written page. Some of the legal papers pre- 
pared in that period of his career are marvelously well done. The lines are 
written as regularly as if the paper was ruled. Every "t" is crossed. Every 
coinma requisite is in place. Not a misspelled word can be found. Seldom 
a correction was made after the first draft. As a rule interlineations in any- 
thing written by Mr. Lincoln — legal document, letter or speech — were rare, even 
in the later days, when the exercise of care in the writing is not so evident. 

Mr. Lincoln was not at all boastful of his superiority as a writer. The biogra- 
phers record that when, just old enough to vote, he was asked at the polling place 
in New Salem if he could write, he replied, "A little bit. I can make a few 
rabbit tracks." This sounds like Mr. Lincoln, and yet it was strange that a 
young man who wrote such an unusual hand as he did should have been asked 
that question by one of his neighbors. 

To write was a family characteristic of the Lincolns. The president had 
first cousins, sons of his father's brother, who wrote in plain legible style much 
better than the average person of their day. None of them wrote as well as did 
Abraham Lincoln of Sangamon. Whence came this accomplishment? Lincoln 
had it from the time he was a very young man. He was self educated, but this 
gift of superior handwriting was an inheritance and it came with the steady 
nerves and the equable disposition on the Lincoln side of the house. 

While Mr. Lincoln did not make boast of his skill with the pen, he indirectly 
let it be seen that he scrutinized the composition of the other fellow. In one 
case, the papers of which have been preserved in the county where the trial took 
place, Mr. Lincoln wrote that the indictment was bad, "in that it does not show 
with sufficient certainty whether the defendant was the murderer of the mur- 
dered man." 

Painstaking is not the word that applies to Lincoln's writing. The pen or 
pencil moved over the page easilj', naturally, readily. That is apparent from 
the style of writing. Even stronger evidence is found in the volume of written 
matter which Mr. Lincoln turned out. From the beginning of his career as a 
lawyer down through the busiest days at the White House, Mr. Lincoln wrote 
and wrote. There are in existence letters and papers of his penmanship in greater 
number probably than any other president wrote. The letters number thousands. 
Many of them bear evidence that they were not answers and need not have been 



70 A Reporter's Lincoln 

written and would not have been written by one to whom writing was irksome or 
in any sense a task. Lincoln liked to write so well that he very seldom dictated 
anything. When it was suggested to him, in 1858, during the campaign against 
Douglas for the senatorship that he avail himself of the assistance of a young 
newspaper man in the revision of his speeches for the press, Mr. Lincoln declined 
with a smile. 



In the extensive and widely varied collection of Lincoln papers possessed by 
William K. Bixby of St. Louis are interesting revelations of this strong writing 
habit of Mr. Lincoln. Whether in letter, law paper or state document, the com- 
position was simple and closely condensed. But this did not mean that Mr. Lin- 
coln wished to get through as quickly as possible. It indicated the habit of mind. 
There are very few letters of Mr. Lincoln which exceed a single page. 

Prince L. Hudgins was a lawyer in St. Louis who was charged with conspiring 
against the government. In his letter to President Lincoln, Mr. Hudgins 
explained that the charge against him was based on a speech he had made in 
St. Joseph several months before the law under which he was being prosecuted 
was enacted. Congressman King presented the petition and recommended the 
pardon. The president wrote on the papers: 

"Attorney General: Please see Mr. King and make out the pardon he asks. 
Give this man a fair deal, if possible." 

And then, probably after a little further conversation with the Missourian, 
the president, in the kindness of his heart, added this to the indorsement: 

"Gov. King leaves Saturday evening and would want to have it with him to 
take along, if possible. Would wish it made out as soon as conveniently can 
be." 

The attention which the president gave personally to even routine matters 
is shown by the instructions and comments written by him upon these many 
papers in the Bixby collection, the most of which have never been printed. Upon 
the application for a judgeship at Plattsmouth, Utah, appears this in the well- 
known hand: 

"I knew George May when a boy and young man, then a little inclined to be 
dissipated. If free from that now, he has intellect for almost any place. I 
suppose the within names ought to be a sufficient voucher as to that. 

A. LINCOLN." 

"The within names" indorsing May are those of James Harlan, James F. 
Wilson and James W. Grimes of Iowa. Harlan and Grimes were senators and 
Wilson was a representative in Congress from Iowa. 

Upon the application of Judge S. P. McCurdy of Missouri for an appoint- 
ment President Lincoln made an indorsement which reveals how well he remem- 
bered the sharp division between Missouri Republicans: 

"This is a good recommendation for a territorial judgeship, embracing both 
sides in Missouri and many other respectable gentlemen. 

A. L." 

Gov. Green Clay Smith of Kentucky presented in person, it appears from the 
papers in Mr. Bixby's collection, an application for a pardon in behalf of William 
Duke. Col. Duke wrote that "in a state of excitement he had accepted a com- 
mission to raise a regiment" for the Confederate cause, but had reconsidered 
almost immediately, had taken the oath of allegiance and had given a bond of 
$5000 for his loyalty. Mr. Lincoln wrote upon the papers: 



The Bixhy Collection 71 

"William Duke is hereby pardoned for all offenses herein confessed by him 
up to the time of his taking the oath and giving bond. 

A. L." 

Then he gave to Mr. Smith this note to the attorney general: 

"Please make out and send for my signature a formal pardon according to 
letter with my little indorsement which will be shown you by Gov. Green Clay 
Smith." 

Upon the papers accompanying an application for a justice of the peace 
appointment in Washington the president wrote: 

"I do not recollect having acquaintance with Esquire Ferguson, but if the 
commissioner of public buildings inclines to appoint him to any place I have 
no objection. 

A. L." 

In forwarding the papers of Joseph M. Root of Ohio to the proper cabinet 
officer the president wrote upon the back: 

"Of course it is not proper for me to indulge my personal feelings, but I am 
very partial to Mr. Root." 

The papers which Mr. Bixby has in his collection come down to the last 
days. There is the pardon of James McCan, granted on the 22d of March, 1865, 
with this indorsement: 

"On the request of Vice-President Johnson it is ordered that a special pardon 
be made out in this case. A. LINCOLN." 



The kindly consideration for others which was shown by President Lincoln 
was marvelous. In the closing weeks of the war, with a multitude of matters 
pressing for attention, he went on examining and indorsing this endless mail 
conscientiously and thoughtfully. On the 9th of March, 1865, he sent an 
unsuccessful candidate's papers to the Department of Justice with this written 
by him on the back: 

"This came to me at half-past 3 p. m., after the nomination for district attor- 
ney had been sent in. A. L." 

Mr. Bixby has a letter written by Mr. Lincoln to O. H. Browning of Quincy, 
upon a professional matter, which illustrates the aptitude of the writer in coin- 
ing phrases to express a great deal. The letter was sent in June, 1857: 

"I learned that this note was given as a sort of 'insolvent fix-up' with his 
creditors — a fact in his history I have not before learned of. Our interview ended 
in the assurance he will pay it middle of June." 

A copy of a telegram in his own hand-writing which Mr. Lincoln sent from 
the War Department to Mrs. Lincoln while she was in Boston the 9th of 
November, 1862, reads: 

"Airs. Cuthbert and Aunt Mary want to move to the W^hite House because it 
has grown so cold at Soldiers' Home. Shall they? 

A. LINCOLN." 



72 A Reporter's Lincoln 

Robert Lincoln in Two Crises 

The visit to his son at the Exeter institution was to have important bearing 
upon Mr. Lincoln's political fortunes. At the time it was prompted probably with 
no other motive than a father's solicitude for his eldest son. Robert Todd Lin- 
coln, in a reminiscent talk with Frederick W. Lehmann, told how unconsciously 
at the time, he had been associated with two crises in his father's life. The first 
was in the winter of 1859-60, a few months before the nomination. Mr. Lincoln 
very much desired that Robert should go to Harvard. Like many other men who 
had been denied advantages of higher education he was determined that his 
son should have the best that the time afforded. The son was not so strongly 
inclined toward Harvard. However, in accord with his father's wishes he went 
on from Springfield to Cambridge. He quickly discovered that he lacked the 
preparation for the high standards of the entrance examination. The Phillips- 
Exeter Academy was the leading preparatory' school for college in those days. 
Thither Robert was sent, rather reluctantly on his own part, to be made ready 
for Harvard. Mr. Lincoln was so deeply interested in his plans for his son's 
education that one of the strong inducements to make the eastern trip and 
speak at Cooper Institute in New York City was his desire to see how Robert 
was progressing with his studies. From New York, Mr. Lincoln went to New 
Hampshire. On the way to and from Exeter he made several speeches in New 
England. Robert Lincoln said to Mr. Lehmann that the record of the balloting 
at the Chicago convention a few months later showed that the Eastern States 
which were the first to come over to the support of his father and insure the 
nomination were those where the speeches on the Exeter trip were made. 

The other crisis, in which he unconsciously had a part, Robert Lincoln said 
to Mr. Lehmann was the night of the tragedy in Ford's Theater. 

That day Robert Lincoln had come up to Washington from Virginia where 
he had been doing staff duty. He went to the White House and after the 
exchange of greetings was told of the plan to attend the theater that evening. 
The President said there would be room for him in the box and asked him to be 
one of the party. The son excused himself on the plea that he was tired and 
would prefer to rest. Robert Lincoln told Mr. Lehmann that he learned after- 
wards the one vacant seat in the box which he would have occupied was directly 
in front of the door by which Booth entered. He thought if he had gone to the 
theater and had taken that chair he might have been in a position to save his 
father's life. 



The Courtship and Home Life 

The true story of Abraham Lincoln's courtship, marriage and home life is 
not the story that has been oft told with variations. It differs in detailed circum- 
stances and in general spirit from much that has been printed hitherto. The 
ture story was told by Albert Stevenson Edwards. There was, at the time, no 
one living so well qualified as Mr. Edwards to speak of Lincoln the lover, and 
of Lincoln, the husband. Albert Stevenson Edwards was the son of Ninian W. 
Edwards. His grandfather was Ninian Edwards, the pioneer governor of Illinois, 
coming from Lexington, Ky. Ninian W. Edwards was educated at the old 
Transylvania University in Lexington. There he courted and married Elizabeth, 
the oldest of a family of famous sisters. Ninian W. Edwards early made his 
home in Springfield. Sisters of Mrs. Edwards came from Lexington to visit 
her until one after another, three of them, Frances, Mary and Ann Todd, were 
married and residing in Springfield. The third of these sisters became the wife 
of Abraham Lincoln. She wore to the end of her troubled days the plain gold 
band placed there by her husband, inscribed "Love is eternal." Town gossips 
dealt harshly and unjustly with Mrs. Lincoln in the Springfield years. Writers 
in Washington held this lady up to ridicule and adverse criticism. The makers of 
Lincoln literature have followed this lead of misjudgment and misrepresentation, 
even to the present. At the home of Ninian W. Edwards, Abraham Lincoln and 
Mary Todd first met. There the acquaintance grew quickly into stronger senti- 
ment. There the courtship was seriously discouraged, but there, when family 
reasoning was unavailing, the wedding took place. And, finally, in that home 
Mrs. Lincoln found refuge and peace after all of her sorrows in the closing 
years of her life. 



Albert Stevenson Edwards was a child witness of the marriage of his aunt to 
Mr. Lincoln. He became the favorite nephew of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln. In his 
youth he spent many of his Saturdays and Sundays at the home of Mr. and Mrs. 
Lincoln. In later years he lived in that home, having been, most fittingly, given 
charge of it by the state. Sitting in the corner room of the home, with family 
reminders all about him, with original letters and records at hand, Mr. Edwards 
talked frankly about periods and events in the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln. 
He was a man of the even-balanced Edwards temperament, not inclined to make 
gossip and parade family history, and consenting only to the conversation because 
he felt it a duty to correct so much of misrepresentation which has been published. 

"The acquaintance of my father with Mr. Lincoln," Mr. Edwards said, "began 
before Mr. Lincoln moved to Springfield. Dr. William Jayne's father and my 
father went out from Springfield to New Salem on some business matter and there 
saw Mr. Lincoln, then quite a young man, about 25 years old. They were a 
good deal impressed with his brightness. Old Dr. Jayne said to my father, indi- 
cating Mr. Lincoln, 'That young man over there will be governor of Illinois 
some day.' The acquaintance was renewed and strengthened when Mr. Lin- 
coln went to the Legislature in 1834. My father was attorney general of the state. 
To the next Legislature Sangamon County sent a delegation to work for the 
removal of the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield. That delegation was 
composed of two senators and seven representatives. Sangamon was a large 



74 A Reporter's Lincoln 

county, much larger than it is now. The delegation was selected with care for 
what it was expected to accomplish. Mr. Lincoln and my father were two of 
the representatives. The other five were: William F. Elkins, Dan Stone, John 
Dawson, Andrew McCormick, Robert L. Wilson. The state senators were: 
Archer G. Herndon and Job Fletcher. This delegation was known as 'the long 
nine,' because the most of them were men of extraordinary stature. My father 
was a man 6 feet and 3 inches, only 1 inch shorter than Mr. Lincoln. McCormick 
was a very large man. Elkins was the smallest. Together those nine men 
measured 54 feet. The delegation was successful in what it undertook. On the 
25th of February, 1837, the Legislature voted to remove the capital from Vanda- 
lia to Springfield. Three days later the account for the entertainment of the 
legislators was presented to the Sangamon delegation." 

Mr. Edwards crossed the room and took from the wall this framed record of 
hospitality. 

Vandalia, 111., Feb. 28, 1837. 
Colonel Dawson to E. Capps, Dr.: 

81 bottles of champagne at $2.00 each $162.00 

Drinks 6.00 

32 pounds almonds 8.00 

14 pounds raisins 10.00 

Cigars 10.00 

Oysters 10.00 

Apples 3.00 

Eatables 12.00 

Breakage 2.00 

Sundries .50 

Total $223.50 

Rec'd payment of N. W. Edwards, March 4th. 

E. CAPPS. 

"Ebenezer Capps," explained Mr. Edwards, as he restored the bill to its 
place among the relics of the Lincoln home, "was the principal storekeeper at 
Vandalia. It was about that time Mr. Lincoln moved from New Salem to 
Springfield. I have never heard why Mr. Lincoln made the change of residence. 
I suppose it was because Springfield was the larger place, with more future to it. 
My father from the beginning admired Mr. Lincoln and maintained friendship 
with him all of the time afterward. Mr. Lincoln's first call at my father's house 
was made in 1837. He was a frequent and welcome visitor there afterward, 
except during the period of the courtship between my aunt and Mr. Lincoln." 



"There is no foundation for that statement." Mr. Edwards said, with empha- 
sis, when reference was made to the story repeatedly published that the wedding 
of Mr. Lincoln was postponed because of his failure to appear at the appointed 
time. 

"My father entertained a great deal." Mr. Edwards continued. "He kept 
open house, you might say, in those days, when the capital was being moved 
and established in Springfield. The governor received a very small salary, $1500 
or $1800 a year. My father was looked upon as a man of considerable means. 
As a matter of public spirit, he undertook to supply the social courtesies deemed 



The Courtship and Home Life 75 

necessary at the new capital. He gave out that he would have four receptions 
during the session, inviting the members of the Legislature, the state ofificers 
and judges of the Supreme Court and leading lawyers, dividing them into four 
lists. He carried out the programme to the letter, entertaining that first winter 
the entire state government. There were many relatives of our family, yoimg 
ladies. Father was a great hand to have the house full of company. In the 
Legislature of 1840 and 1842 were the young men who afterward became the 
most distinguished in the state. Lincoln was about 30, bright and jolly, and a 
great favorite with all of the young ladies at my father's. From 1837 to 1839 
he was one of the most frequent visitors. There was nothing bashful about him. 
The ladies would urge him to call again. My father had a relative here from 
Alton, Matilda Edwards, daughter of Cyrus Edwards, a very bright girl. The 
family thought that Lincoln was much taken with Matilda, but nothing came 
of it beyond story-telling and fun-making. That first session of the Legislature 
at Springfield the House of Representatives met in the Second Presbyterian 
Church, the Senate in the First Methodist Church and the Supreme Court in the 
Episcopal Church. You see, Springfield had obtained the capital before provision 
had been made to take care of the Legislature. My father felt that it devolved 
upon him to provide hospitality, and so it was that his home became the social 
center. My mother's sisters came from Lexington to help do the entertaining. 
Francis was the second and Mary was the third of the family. Mr. Lincoln met 
Mary Todd soon after her arrival in 1839." 



Mr. Edwards took up some family papers and showed this description of 
Mary Todd as a young lady, given by one of her sisters: 

"She had a plump, round figure and was rather shortDf stature. Her features 
were not regularly beautiful, but she was certainly very pretty, with her lovely 
complexion, soft brown hair, and clear blue eyes and intelligent bright face. She 
was singularly sensitive. She was also impulsive, and made no attempt to con- 
ceal her feelings; indeed, it would have been an impossibility had she desired to 
do so, for her face was an index to every passing emotion. Without desiring 
to wound, she occasionally indulged in sarcastic, witty remarks, that cut like a 
damascus blade, but there was no malice behind them. She was full of humor, 
but never unrefined. Perfectly frank and extremely spirited, her candor of 
speech and independence of thought often gave offense where none was meant, 
for a more aflfectionate heart never beat." 

If this is a true analysis of Mary Todd's character, and there is no reason to 
doubt the sister's estimate, writers on Lincoln have done his wife injustice. Mr. 
Lincoln's calls at the Edward's home became more frequent after the arrival of 
Mary Todd. Other young lawyers flocked to the house, among them Stephen A. 
Douglas, who was very much smitten with the little Kentucky girl. But it was 
not many weeks before Mary Todd began to show decided preference for 
Abraham Lincoln. 

"My mother and my father both liked Mr. Lincoln," Mr. Edward's said. "Up 
to the time of the courtship they had made Lincoln welcome and had encouraged 
his visits. A cousin of my mother, John Todd Stuart, was the law partner- of 
Mr. Lincoln. But my mother and my father at that time didn't want Mary to 
marry Mr. Lincoln. There was no objection to the match on the ground of Mr. 
Lincoln's character or social standing. But Mr. Lincoln then hadn't $500 to his 
name. He was just getting started in the practice of his profession. My mother 



76 A Reporter's Lincoln 

and my father felt that he could not support Mary as they thought she ought 
to be maintained, and for that reason only they opposed the engagement. Mary 
Todd might have married Douglas at any time. Shields paid her attention as 
did others. But Lincoln and Mary fell in love with each other almost at their 
first meeting in 1839. Mary was the belle of that period in the new capital. She 
was full of jokes. I have heard them tell of her pranks. One day she was down 
town with several other young ladies. Springfield had few sidewalks at that time. 
Mary and her companions took a dray, climbed on and rode home to escape 
walking through the mud. When my mother saw that things were becoming 
serious between Lincoln and Mary, she treated him rather coldly. The invitations 
to call were not pressed. This didn't have the effect my mother intended. Dur- 
ing 1841 and 1843 my mother did what she could to break up the match." 



Springfield people remember Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards, the eldest of the Todd 
sisters, as a lady of far more than ordinary attractiveness. Mrs. Edwards' traits 
especially fitted her to carry out her husband's spirit of hospitality. She was of 
gentle, winning disposition, a charming hostess; she is remembered to this day 
as having been the social leader at the new state capital. Mrs. Edwards did not 
resort to measures strenuous or extreme to prevent the marriage of her spirited 
sister, but she tried to avert it in her own way without hurting the feelings of 
Mr. Lincoln. 

Lincoln was 30 and Mary Todd was nearly 20 when their acquaintance began. 
Lincoln's law practice was very small. He had been admitted to the bar only a 
short time before. He felt the weight of the seriousness of the objection which 
Mrs. Edwards raised. The girl was deeply in love with him. She was impulsive 
and strong-willed. It fell to Lincoln to do some hard thinking for both of them. 
That he had periods of depression and despondency, as he contemplated his 
unfortunate financial condition and realized what M^as expected of him, is not 
to be wondered. Mary Todd was highly educated for that day. Mr. Edwards 
preserved an account of her school days, written to a sister of Mrs. Lincoln by 
a schoolmate who remembered these facts: 

"Mary was bright and talkative and warm-hearted. She was far advanced 
over girls of her age in education. She was a pupil of the celebrated Mr. Ward. 
He was a splendid educator; his requirements and rules were very strict, and 
woe to her who did not conform to the letter. Mary accepted the condition of 
things and never came under his censure. We occupied the same room, and I 
can see her now as she sat on one side of a table, poring over her books, and I 
on the other, with a candle between. She was very studious, with a retentive 
memory and a mind that enabled her to grasp and thoroughly understand the 
lessons she was required to learn. Mr. Ward required his pupils to recite some 
of their lessons before breakfast. On a pleasant summer morning, nature would 
hardly rebel, but what an ordeal to rise in winter by candlelight and make the 
needful preparations to encounter the furious blasts! I have nothing but the 
most pleasant memories of her at that time. I never saw any display of temper, 
nor saw her reprimanded during the months I was an inmate of your father's 
house." 

The education that Mary Todd received included the classics. She studied 
Latin and Greek. From Ward she went to a finishing school kept by Mrs. Montell 
for the favored daughters of the blue grass region. There she remained four 



The Courtship and Home Life 77 

years. Nothing but French was spoken at that school. All of her life Mrs. Lin- 
coln was a thorough French scholar, speaking and reading the language. She 
read the best French authors. At this school of Mrs. Montell Mary Todd was 
taught, with other accomplishments, dancing. She came heart free to the new 
Illinois capital. One of her especial friends in Lexington had been Miss 
Margaret WicklifTe, who became the wife of Gen. William Preston. The 
father of the Todd sisters was Robert Smith Todd, descended from an 
old colonial and revolutionary family. He was a merchant in Lexington, 
and for some years president of a bank. His first wife, the mother 
of Mrs. Lincoln, was a daughter of Maj. Robert Parker of Lexington. 



Mary Todd, of the best blood of Kentucky, fascinating in appearance and in 
manner, intellectual, educated with the best advantages that Lexington could 
give, quickly fell in love with Abraham Lincoln, the young lawj'er just starting 
in his profession. Her bright sayings became the talk of the town. At least 
one of them was at the expense of Mr. Lincoln. It is told that at a social gather- 
ing Mr. Lincoln approached the young lady and said to her: 

"Miss Mary, I want to dance with you the worst way." 

The pressing request was complied with. A little later one of the other 
young ladies mischievously asked how Lincoln danced. 

"The worst way," laconically replied Miss Mary. 

She was Miss Mary, for there was between Airs. Edwards and Mary Todd, 
another sister, Frances, who also spent much of her time in Springfield, a guest 
at the hospitable Edwards' home, and who married a Springfield resident. Dr. 
Wallace. The Wallace wedding was one of the grand affairs of its time. Curiously 
this marriage of the Wallaces has been described and pictured again and again, 
even down to the immediate present, as the wedding of Abraham Lincoln and 
Mary Todd, which was an altogether different kind of an affair. One of the 
earliest biographers of Lincoln led off with a description of this Wallace wed- 
ding, mistaking it for the Lincoln wedding, and other writers have fallen into 
the same error, making it contribute to the misrepresentation of Mrs. Lincoln 
and using it as evidence of excessive display and vanity on the part of one who 
was to marry a young man of no financial resources. The facts are that the 
marriage of Lincoln and Mary Todd was an unostentatious affair, taking place 
on short notice in the presence of a few relatives. The grand affair was the 
wedding of the sister which preceded it only a few weeks. The biographer 
Herndon made this mistake of confusing the Lincoln with the Wallace wedding. 
Later writers have accepted his version. 



"When Lincoln saw that his attentions to my aunt were looked upon coldly 
by my mother and father, his visits to our house became less frequent," Mr. 
Edwards said. "But that did not mean a suspension of the courtship. Lincoln 
and Mary arranged to meet at the houses of mutual friends. One of the houses 
where they were made welcome and where they met often was the residence 
of Simeon Francis, who was editor of the Sangamo Journal, as it was then called. 
Afterward Sangamo, the Indian form, was changed to Sangamon. There was no 
break in the courtship and there was no setting of the date and then postponing 
the marriage. The courtship was a long one because Lincoln was in no condition 
to support a wife. The two remained loyal to each other, meeting from time to 



78 A Reporter's Lincoln 

time and waiting for Mr. Lincoln's circumstances to justify marriage. Very 
shortly after Frances Todd married Dr. Wallace, Mary told my mother that Mr. 
Lincoln and she were going to be married that night. At the same time Mr. 
Lincoln met my father on the street and said that they were going to be married 
that evening at the residence of Simeon Francis. My father said to Mr. Lincoln: 

" 'That will never do. Mary Todd is my ward. If the marriage is going to take 
place, it must be at my house.' 

"There was an immediate change of plans. The arrangements were made for 
a quiet wedding that Sunday evening. Word was sent to the relatives in Spring- 
field. The ceremony was performed in the presence of a few people thus hastily 
summoned. 

The wedding took place on the 4th of November, 1842. Mr. Edwards was 
present, but a child. His statements as to the circumstances are borne out by 
the often-repeated recollections of Mrs. Lincoln's sisters. Mrs. Dr. Wallace said 
again and again that there was only one ceremony arranged for, and that there 
was absolutely no truth in the Herndon story that Lincoln disappeared and could 
not be found when the hour came. Mrs. Wallace was as positive in her correc- 
tions of other misstatements made by Herndon and repeated by other writers 
that the wedding was a large one, that Mrs. Lincoln wore a white silk dress, and 
so on. The Lincoln marriage was a quiet one by the expressed preference of the 
bride. According to the very clear and definite statement of Mrs. Wallace, Mr. 
Lincoln and Mary Todd told Mrs. Edwards on a Sunday morning that they had 
decided to be married that evening. Mr. Lincoln went in search of Mr. Edwards 
and told him. Mrs. Wallace was sent for. The sisters hurried the preparations. 
They yielded their objections and determined that Mary should have a home wed- 
ding, instead of going to the home of Mr. Francis. Mrs. Wallace, in telling of the 
preparations, said she never worked harder in her life than she did that Sunday 
in November, getting things ready for the marriage. Only a few persons were 
present, as Mrs. Wallace clearly remembered. They were Mr. and Mrs. Ben- 
jamin Edwards, Maj. and Mrs. John Todd Stuart, Dr. John Todd and family, 
Dr. and Mrs. Wallace, and, of course, Mr. and Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards, and 
perhaps one or two others. The bride, Mrs. Wallace said, wore a simple white 
muslin dress. The ceremony was performed by Rev. Mr. Dresser, who came up 
to Mr. Edwards' house following the evening service at his church. After this 
quiet marriage Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln went to the tavern and boarded until they 
were able to furnish three or four rooms. In a few years they were able to buy 
a story and a half house on South Eighth street, and that is the house, enlarged, 
now known as the Lincoln home. 



Following the lead of Herndon, most writers have made the marriage appear 
unfortunate. They have represented Lincoln as unhappy in his home life. They 
have attributed to Mrs. Lincoln the character of a high-tempered, extravagant, 
ambitious, tormenting woman. They have assumed that Mr. Lincoln endured a 
living martyrdom. Within the most recent revival of interest in all pertaining to 
Mr. Lincoln there has been cast reproach upon Mrs. Lincoln. A sister's testi- 
mony to the relations of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln is far at variance with some of 
the printed statements. 

"They understood each other thoroughly," is the language of one of Mrs. 
Lincoln's sisters: "and Mr. Lincoln looked beyond the impulsive words and 
manner and knew that his wife was devoted to him and to his interests. They 



The Courtship and Home Life 79 

lived in a quiet and unostentatious manner. Mrs. Lincoln was very fond of read- 
ing, and interested herself greatly in her husband's political views and aspira- 
tions. She was fond of home. She made nearly all her own and her children's 
clothes. She was a cheerful woman, a delightful conversationalist and well 
informed on the topics of the day." 

This is the recollection based upon the observation of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln 
some part of every day for six months at a time. The sisters and other near 
relatives saw none of that unhappiness in the relations of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln 
which is so often mentioned. 

The marriage ended all objection or antagonism toward Mr. Lincoln on the 
part of his wife's relatives. Mr. Edwards preserves the autograph letter which 
the father of Mrs. Lincoln wrote to Ninian W. Edwards in December, 1844, 
showing the estimate he had put upon Mr. Lincoln as a son-in-law at that 
early date. Mr. Todd wrote: 

"I feel more than grateful that my daughters all have married gentlemen 
whom I respect and esteem, and I should be pleased if it could ever be in my 
power to give them a more substantial evidence of my feelings than in mere 
words or professions. Whether it will ever be in my power I can not say, and 
perhaps it matters little. I will be satisfied if they discharge all their duties and 
make as good wives as I think they have good husbands." 



After the marriage Mr. Lincoln never showed any trace of resentment 
toward his wife's relatives for their opposition to the marriage. With Mrs. 
Lincoln it was different. She had said a little defiantly to her brother-in-law, 
Ninian W. Edwards, before the wedding, that she was going to marry a man 
who would one day be president of the United States. In the years afterward she 
would recall those long months of courtship without home sympathy and show 
that the memory of the family opposition to htr choice still rankled. 

"After the marriage," said Mr. Edwards, "Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln visited at 
our house. They were always invited there on social occasions. They went out 
in Springfield society. I can remember that when I was a boy the trouble Mr. 
Lincoln used to cause at social gatherings. He would get a crowd around him 
in the gentlemen's room and start a conversation, with the result that the ladies 
would be left alone downstairs, and would have to send some one to break up 
Air. Lincoln's party, in order to get the gentlemen downstairs. Mr. Lincoln and 
my father were always very friendly. Mrs. Lincoln, I think, always was a little 
cool toward my mother for the course she had taken to discourage the engage- 
ment. But my mother and Mr. Lincoln were very friendly. At the first inaugura- 
tion Mr. Lincoln insisted that my mother must come to Washington. At that 
time my mother was at Andover, where my brother and sister were going to 
school. When there was affliction, Mr. Lincoln always sent for my mother. He 
had her come to the White House and remain some time after Willie's death." 

The best kind of a witness to the home life of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln was Mr. 
Edwards. 

"I used to come to their house Saturdays and Sundays almost every week," 
he said. "I never saw a more loving couple. I never heard a harsh word or 
anything out the way. Mrs. Lincoln always spoke of him as Mr. Lincoln. She 
was devoted to him. Mr. Lincoln was a home man. On Sundays he was to be 
found here. He would go downtown for his mail, stop in at the drug store for 
a few minutes, and then come home to stay." 



80 A Reporter's Lincoln 

Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln were very unlike physically and temperamentally. Mrs. 
Lincoln was a gentlewoman bred to all of the little niceties of life. Mr. Lincoln 
had grown to manhood with no thought of some of the customs which Mrs. 
Lincoln thought essential. Of several ways Mrs. Lincoln succeeded, after many 
trials in "breaking" Mr. Lincoln. But he would get up and open the front door 
when somebody knocked, instead of waiting for the girl to go. To one of her rela- 
tives Mrs. Lincoln complained of this habit of Mr. Lincoln as a great annoyance. 

"Mary," said this young relative, "if I had a husband with a mind such as 
yours has, I wouldn't care what he did." 

Mrs. Lincoln showed the pleasure this tribute to her husband gave her, as 
she replied, apologetically, "It is very foolish; it is a small matter to complain of." 

"Mrs. Lincoln," said Mr. Edwards, "had more to do with making Mr. Lin- 
coln president than many people think." 



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